BCWipe file deletion utility is designed as an extension for the standard Windows Explorer program - meaning that BCWipe Setup extends the set of commands available in Windows Explorer. If you want to wipe a specific file, or a group of files or folders, just select them in the right pane of Explorer, move your mouse over the selection and right-click.
The Delete with wiping command should appear. Choose suitable options from the BCWipe window.

To Wipe Free Space on a drive, please right-click with your mouse on the location in the drive string in the left pane of Windows Explorer. A pop-up context menu should appear which contains the Wipe Free Space command. Choose suitable options from the BCWipe window.
Attention!
We strongly recommend running a disk checking utility before wiping free space on a drive! BCWipe allocates all available system resources during its operation. So if there are any errors or virus activity on the hard drive before running BCWipe, then they could cause more serious problems just after using BCWipe.

BCWipe also includes the BCWipe Task Manager utility for configuring BCWipe to run wiping tasks automatically. You can set a time for running the task, as well as other special options.

BCWipe now includes the Transparent Wiping feature (introduced in version 4.0) that intercepts all ‘delete' commands sent by the user or by the system and securely wipes the data files. Furthermore, all temporary files created by Windows or by any application will be wiped when they are no longer needed. Activating Transparent Wiping eliminates time-consuming processes, such as wipe free space.

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

BCWipe can permanently delete temporary files of common Internet browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera). Wiping of these browsers can be performed during your Windows session; reboot is not required.

The previous version of BCWipe was able to wipe the system pagefile at system startup. This function can still work on Windows XP, but Windows Vista and Windows 7 deny any access to the pagefile.

To protect your pagefile with the current version of BCWipe, we recommend that you use the CryptoSwap utility that transparently encrypts the pagefile.

When you open the BCWipe window, you will see the Wiping Scheme edit box. Click the 'tick' button on the right and the list of available schemes will appear. Select a wiping scheme, then click 'Edit' and you will see the wiping pattern for each pass. It is not possible to edit existing (embedded) wiping standard schemes, but you can create your own wiping scheme with any number of passes by clicking 'New'.

File slack is the disk space from the end of a file till the end of the last cluster used by that file. A cluster is the 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, then the data will still be available in that 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, then the 25% left over from the old deleted document will still remain in the cluster.

The data in file slack (or slack space) is invisible by simple windows file editors (e.g., Notepad, MS Word), but it is easily read by any special utility. So it's important to wipe file slacks in order to have complete confidence that all your data has been permanently deleted from the disk.

On Windows XP, System Restore only saves, or ‘guards', system files (e.g., .exe, .com, .bat, .ini, .dll) before changing and deleting.

So if you need to wipe a typical text file, MS Word document, Excel workbook, some picture file and so on, then you do not have to turn the off System Restore. When wiping a file that is guarded by System Restore (see system files above), a copy of that file will be created (if you run 7-pass wiping, 7 copies will be created). If you delete a 'guarded' file with the standard 'delete' command, then the copy is created and saved. If you then run BCWipe to wipe free space, then the deleted file will be wiped, but the copy will remain because it is not marked as 'free'. If you also set the option to wipe file slacks, then System Restore will create copies of all 'guarded' files because BCWipe opens and changes the files to wipe file slacks. Therefore, the purpose of data wiping would be lost; in this case it is necessary to disable System Restore for proper wiping.

On Windows XP this is not a very critical issue - if you wipe files with System Restore ON, it would not cause a security leak because it does not concern your private data. However, it would result in an enlarged System Restore archive.

On Windows 7 and Windows Vista it is absolutely necessary to disable System Protection because it saves copies of ALL files that were changed or deleted. This concerns your data files - copies of files stored in the System Protection archive are named 'Shadow Copies'.

BCWipe cannot be used for wiping an entire hard drive. Jetico has a separate product for this purpose: BCWipe Total WipeOut.

Wiping an entire hard drive (or all hard drives) on a computer with BCWipe Total WipeOut is a simple procedure - just boot the computer using a BCWipe Total WipeOut bootable CD (or USB flash drive) and confirm wiping.
Learn more at http://www.jetico.com/wiping-bcwipe-total-wipe-out.

For backward compatibility reasons (computers running DOS or Windows 9x operating systems), BCWipe does also contain a special whole hard drive wiping command line utility, named BCWipePD. Jetico no longer recommends using this utility, as it is no longer updated and may not work properly on the latest versions of operating systems and hardware.

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, Solid-state disks 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.

BCWipe occupies all available disk space when wiping data during the Wipe Free Space process. All occupied space is freed once the process has successfully finished. Be aware that Windows sends a low disk space notification just before BCWipe finishes - you can ignore this notification message.

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

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

Windows System Agent (or Event Manager, or your antivirus software) may detect and report the change. You should ignore this message and confirm the system file replacement. If you let BCWipe complete its task, then it will restore the file in the same state as before wiping - except of course that the file slack will be wiped.

Note that slack space of system files only need to be wiped once, just after system installation. You don't have to wipe them whenever you wipe free space because system files cannot be moved and their slack space cannot be changed. So you can confidently skip the slack space wiping for all files in the Windows System folder.

You can assign some files or folders to be skipped during file slack wiping. Please do the following:

1. Run 'wipe free space' command, go to 'Wiping options' tab and check the 'Use skipped list' box.
2. Click 'Edit/View skipped list'.
3. Check the 'Skip windows folder' box in the displayed window.
4. The same is true for files from the 'Program Files' folder, so you should check the 'Skip program folder' box as well.

Use log file for investigation purposes. Follow these steps:

1. In the Transparent Wiping task, enable the ‘Use log file' option.
2. Click ‘LogView' for the special Log Viewer utility to open the log file.
3. Continue your usual activity:
   - Open/Close applications like MSWord, Internet browser, email program, etc.
   - Run system procedures like Disk CleanUp, Empty Recycle Bin, disable System Protection, etc.

LogViewer will show you the Transparent Wiping process in progress. You will see which process initiated the deletion, what the file name is and whether or not the wipe was successful.

The following actions may improve your system performance while using Transparent Wiping:

• Disable logging when you are confident that Transparent Wiping has been configured and works properly.
• Set ‘one random pass' as the wiping scheme for Transparent Wiping (only if permitted by your organization's data security policy)
• Use Exclude and/or Include lists. Exclude system folders/files that cannot contain private data, such as *.exe and *.dll. Exclude processes that do not deal with your private data like Windows Update.