BCWipe Frequently Asked Questions

BCWipe utility is designed as an extension for standard Windows Explorer program. It means that BCWipe Setup extends set of commands available in Windows Explorer.

If you want to Wipe Free Space on some drive, please point on the drive string in left pane of Windows Explorer by mouse and press right mouse button - pop-up context menu will appear. The menu should contain Wipe free space command. Choose suitable options from the BCWipe window.

If you want to wipe file, or group of files, or folders, just select them in right pane of Explorer, point on the group by mouse and press right button. The Delete with wiping command should appear. Choose suitable options from the BCWipe window.

Additionally BCWipe includes BCWipe Task Manager utility. The utility allows configuring BCWipe to run wiping tasks automatically. You can set a time for running the task, as well as special options for the task. For example, you can configure BCWipe to wipe free space of all your hard drives at midnight every Friday and use US DoD 5200.28-STD wiping standard for the process. Task Manager is mainly used for wiping Internet files at start-up.

Attention! We strongly recommend to run disk checking utility before wiping free space on a drive!

You should run BCWipe Task Manager (Start--Programs--BCWipe-- BCWipe Task Manager), and create task named Wipe special folders. In the task window, go to 'Special folders' tab and choose the folders you want to wipe. Go to 'Wipe options' tab and set wiping options if required. Then reboot computer. All the selected folders will be wiped during reboot.

There are some special folders in Windows system ( Recycle Bin, Temporary Internet Folder, and so on). System serves these folders as special database and does not allow any other applications to manipulate with items inside those folders. You can run Delete with wiping command for the whole folder, however, some items are locked by Windows, so if you need to wipe content of such folders completely, you should use BCWipe Task Manager utility (see previous question).

When you open BCWipe window, you can see the 'Scheme' edit box with 'tick' button on the right. If you press the button, the list of available schemes will appear where you can find 'one random pass' and US DoD 5200.28-STD and Peter Gutmann scheme. Select a scheme, then press 'Edit/View Scheme' button, you will see the wiping pattern for each pass.

Besides, you can create your own scheme using 'Edit/View Scheme' button.

File slack is the disk space from the end of a file till the end of the last cluster used by that file. Cluster is minimal portion of disk space used by the file system.

For example, if you create and save a long document that fills up 75% of a cluster, and then you delete it with a standard delete command, the data will still be available in those 75% of the cluster, but the cluster itself will be available for future reuse.

If you then create and save a short document that fills up only 50% of that same cluster, the 25% left over from the old, deleted document will still remain in the cluster. The slack data is invisible by simple windows file editors ( Notepad, MS Word, and etc.) but it ease to read it by any special utility. So it's important to wioe file slacks in order to get a complete confidence that all your data were deleted from the disk.

If System Restore is enabled on your computer, it saves system files ( like .exe, .com., .bat, .ini, .dll, etc) before changing and deleting. So if you are going to Delete with wiping usual text file or MS Word or Excel document or some picture file and so on, you do not have to turn the 'system restore' off. While if you Delete with wiping some file that is guarded by System Restore, copy of the file will be created (if you run 7-pass wiping, 7 copies will be created).

If you delete some 'guarded' file with usual 'delete' command, the copy is created and saved. If you then run BCWipe to Wipe free space, the deleted file will be wiped, but the copy will remain because it is not marked as 'free'.

Also if you set the option to wipe file slacks, the System Restore will create copies of all 'guarded' files because BCWipe opens and changes the files to wipe file slacks.

So the wiping just loses its meaning and it's necessary to disable System Restore for proper wiping.

BCWipe contains a special utility named BCWipePD (Physical Drive). Please look at BCWipe's home directory (like C:\Programs Files\Jetico\BCWipe) and find the BCWipePD subfolder there.This is a DOS-based wiping utility intended to shred contents of entire hard drives, including system data areas.Please read the 'bcwipepd.txt' file carefully before using the utility.

BCWipe does not access drive sectors on a physical level, it uses standard file system operations (file creating and writing data) for wiping. Thus, it makes no difference for the software what drive it works on - BCWipe works identically for hard drives with any configuration, removable drives, backup tapes, etc. BCWipe can clean any device if it looks like a drive in the system and if you have an opportunity to write data to the drive.

We are aware of two cases when "invalud checksum" error appears. Both reflect the fact that the installation file bcwipe.exe got damaged.

1. The damage could happened during downloading process. In this case, just download BCWipe software again from Download Centre. Hope this time the file will be downloaded completely.
2. If there is a virus in your system, it can also damage bcwipe.exe file thus preventing it from starting the installation procedure. Check you system for viruses. Once the system is cleaned from viruses, the bcwipe.exe file will run installation without any error messages.

BCWipe occupies all available disk space by wiping data during Wipe Free Space process. When the process is successfully finished, all occupied space is freed.

Windows sends low disk space notification just before BCWipe finishes. You can ignore the notification message (in Windows 95/98 you can disable it in drive Properties dialog).

If the free space has not got back after wiping, it means that BCWipe could not delete temporary files for some reason. Please try to delete them manually ('~BCWipe.tmp' or '~BCWipe.stu' folders) or run BCWipe again and let it finish its job.

There is an incompatibility between BCWipe's file slack wiping procedure and antivirus utilities. (File slack is an unused disk space between end of file and end of the last disk cluster used by the file.)

Almost all the anti-virus utilities have residental modules loaded in memory for permanent checking of memory and critical files. File slack wiping procedure overwrites every file's slack and then restores file size and its attributes.

Anti-virus residental modules can detect the activity as a virus activity leading to files modification. Even more, the anti-virus executable files may be designed so that any modification of them can cause their crash.

So if you want to wipe files' slacks, please temporary disactivate residental module of your anti-virus software and check that the module is really unloaded (for example, by looking at the active tasks list appeared if you press "Cntrl-Alt-Del" keys).

File slack is the disk space from the actual end of a file up to end of the last cluster used by that file. When BCWipe shreds slack of some file, the program needs to open the file for writing and then over-write slack of the file. Then BCWipe restores original attributes, including date of creation/modification of the file. As a result, BCWipe does not change contents of the file or its attributes.

Windows XP has the Device Driver Roll Back utility. If it is active and BCWipe wipes slack of at least one system file, the Device Driver Roll Back utility recommends to reinstall the system file.

The problem can be solved if you temporarily disable the Device Driver Roll Back utility when you are going to wipe slacks of files, stored in Windows XP system directory. If you don't disable the utility, please ignore the warnings, generated by the utility, and wait until BCWipe will finish the wiping process. After finishing the process Device Driver Roll Back utility will detect correct system files and won't show the warning messages again.

Additionally you can assign some files or folders to be skipped during files' slacks wiping. Please do the following:

1. Run 'wipe free space' command and go to 'Wiping options' tab.
2. There is 'Edit/View skipped list' button in the 'file slacks' part of the window. Press the button.
3. Check the 'Skip windows folder' check box in the appeared window.