Microsoft® Windows® XP Networking and Security Inside Out: Also Covers Windows 2000

Covering Your Tracks

In an effort to simplify recurrent tasks, Windows, Internet Explorer, and major applications all preserve evidence of your recent activities. They record these "tracks" in many different places—in %UserProfile%\Recent (which appears as My Recent Documents on the Windows XP Start menu), %UserProfile%\Local Settings\History, %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files, numerous separate registry keys, the Recycle Bin, the page file, and more.

Inside Out: Wiping the page file

If there's a possibility of your computer falling into the wrong hands, you should be sure that you don't leave any tracks in the page file. Because the page file acts as virtual memory, it contains snippets of everything you work on. By default, ...