How to remove old. How to make your browsing history disappear. Get rid of unnecessary apps

It's no secret that sometimes people want to get rid of entries in the "History" of the browser. Maybe you're a curious teenager who doesn't want your parents to see what you're doing or you're a corporate spy who shamelessly leaks information to competitors, however, the reasons are not important. But how to do that. I, too, was looking for answers to this question. Having understood well, I will teach you.

How to delete history from Mozilla Firefox

So, here are the necessary steps to get rid of history in the browser:

Advice! Think carefully before clicking the "Delete Now" button. After that, the changes made will no longer be returned.

Note: You can delete your Firefox browsing history for today, yesterday, the past week, month, or year. This is very convenient, because maybe you want to keep something from yesterday's data, and delete something from today's.

How to delete data directly from the “Browsing History”

For this you need:

Advice! In order not to engage in these useless actions, you should simply open the Mozilla Firefox window in “Private Mode”. In this case, nothing will be remembered, even cookies will not be created.

You can simply prevent Mozilla Firefox from remembering anything from history.

To do this, do the following:

In earlier versions of Mozilla, it was possible to delete browsing history only from the settings window. Everything is very simple. I will not describe how to do this, because I doubt that anyone else uses this inconvenient junk. And if so, then experience will allow you to do it yourself.

If you do not format the system drive before reinstalling Windows, you will get a burden in the form of files of the old operating system (OS) stored in the Windows.old directory and occupying tens of gigabytes. In addition, the system folders of the old profile and the already non-working option in the OS boot menu will remain. Getting rid of this garbage is necessary for the normal operation of the computer. In this article, we will explain step by step how to remove traces of old Windows.

This folder is located on the C drive and stores the old Windows user's personal data, such as documents. You can open the directory, view the contents, and copy the files you need. You can't erase Windows.old in the usual way. To do this, follow the sequence of actions:

Removing old system folders

When you open the "Users" folder on the C drive, you will see the system folders left over from the old Windows. They can not be removed either from the explorer or special programs. To do this, you need to get the rights of the owner:

Having received the necessary rights of the owner of the folder, you can safely send it to the Recycle Bin.

Editing the download menu

From the command line "Run"

With this method, you can remove unnecessary options from the bootloader menu forever.

From system settings

This option will hide unnecessary downloads when you start your computer.

Features of Windows XP

The boot.ini file is responsible for the Windows version boot manager. It is hidden in the root drive C and can be edited in a regular notepad. It is better not to do this: an error in editing will lead to a system failure. A safer way is to use the settings described above (remove the list of OS downloads). You decide. We will only give advice on how to edit boot.ini.

Unfortunately, many users note that some updates released for our popular Windows 7 OS can often (most often due to their flaws) cause unexpected failures and errors, not only the latest ones, but also obviously outdated. In addition, the updates themselves on the hard drive take up too much space. How to uninstall old Windows 7 updates "Ultimate", "Home" or any other modifications released later? By and large, there is nothing impossible in this. The only question is how expedient such actions are. In most cases, this concerns cleaning up disk space when it is not enough for user needs or to prevent all sorts of conflicts from appearing.

Is it possible to remove old updates of Windows 7 and similar system versions?

Speaking about the possibility of completely removing outdated updates that the user does not need, it can be noted that it is really possible to get rid of them. This will not harm the system, especially since in all modifications for which the release of updates is constantly announced by Microsoft, this possibility is provided from the very beginning. The only trouble is that it is almost impossible to perform such operations manually.

When searching for updates, files are placed in a special WinSxS directory, which is located directly in the main system directory on the C drive, but subfolders and files cannot be deleted in the usual way in Explorer, if only because access to them, even if the user is an administrator at least three times , is completely blocked. How to uninstall old Windows 7 Home updates or any other version of the OS, including earlier and later? An ordinary user can be offered at least three options for actions that can be performed independently.

How to remove old Windows 7 updates: the easiest method

So, for starters, you can use the regular means of cleaning the system partition. In the "Explorer" through the RMB menu on the system drive, select the properties item and on the immediately presented general settings tab, click the disk cleanup button.

After the system scans objects that you can safely get rid of, additionally click the clean up system files button, and check the necessary items in the extended list that appears. The point of previous system installations or the point of updates is responsible for the removal of updates. after that, it remains only to confirm the cleaning. The process can take quite a long time, so you have to be patient.

Selective removal of updates by means of the system

Now a few words about how to remove old Windows 7 updates selectively. To do this, you can use a no less simple technique.

In the "Control Panel" (control), select the program and components section, in the window with the list of applications presented, go to the item for viewing installed updates, which is located in the menu on the left, scroll through the list, mark the package that is no longer needed (all system update names begin with the letters "KV ”), then just click the delete button at the top. After completing all the steps, do not forget to reboot the system.

Using uninstallers

Now let's see how to remove old Windows 7 update files using automated applications. For example, let's take the iObit Uninstaller program, which is considered one of the most powerful in its class.

In the application menu, go to the Windows updates section (it can be called either from the list on the left or by pressing the button on the top right), then sort the packages by installation date, mark the unnecessary ones and click the uninstall button. The use of such utilities is convenient because you can get rid of updates in batch mode, that is, remove several pieces at a time. It is impossible to perform such an operation using standard system tools (updates will have to be removed one by one).

Note: the second and third methods can also get rid of unnecessary self-installing Office packages.

How to completely disable the installation of updates?

How to remove old Windows 7 updates, figured it out. But after all, the main problem lies precisely in the fact that with automatic installation of updates activated, the system will still search for and install them, regardless of whether the user needs them or not. Here you can do two things. In the first case, in the "Update Center" you can activate manual search and exclude unnecessary packages from the list (this is especially often necessary to prevent the installation of failed updates that cause critical errors).

In the second option, you can disable the "Update Center" altogether, using the services section (services.msc) for this, where you need to stop the services indicated in the image above and set the manual start in the start type field. Again, after saving the options, it is advisable to perform a complete restart of the computer (not logging out of the system or account, but rebooting).

Note: to disable the installation of updates only for office applications, it is enough to deactivate the item for searching and installing updates for other Microsoft software products.

Outcome

In principle, the problem of how to uninstall old Windows 7 updates can also be solved by creating special keys in the system registry and then launching an automated process from the command console or using the PowerShell toolkit, but such procedures for the average user may seem too complicated in development, so they were not considered. In addition, it is possible, after all, to do trouble in the registry, and such that the entire system refuses to work (if anyone does not know, all changes are saved automatically, and there is absolutely no possibility to undo or roll back the actions performed). But, returning to the main question, we can say that the three listed methods are enough for ordinary users, as they say, with their heads. In addition, no matter how hard you try, it is precisely the use of such techniques that you will not cause damage to the functionality of the system itself, even despite the fact that almost all updates released are focused on eliminating security problems.

I make backups every day, more than a dozen gigabytes of information accumulate. You need to clean it, especially since old backups are not of particular importance. I used to delete it manually, but then I thought about it ... I’m too lazy to do it manually, all the more you can plug, blunt and delete the wrong thing. In short, the lazy will do the best - you need to automate.

Use built-in utility forfiles. Now everything is done by the task scheduler and a simple bat-nickname in two lines. Example next.

forfile commands. Examples

This is how the command looks like to display all files with the .rar extension on drive C older than 10 days:
forfiles /p C:\ /m *.rar /s /d -10 /c "cmd /c echo @path"

Let's sort the keys in order:

/ p - let for verification. In the example drive C:\
/m — search mask. It can be omitted if we want to remove all files in the folder. In the example, all archives with the .rar extension
/ s - we scan nested folders as well.
/d - date. Can be specified in the format dd.mm.yyyy or dd. We have -10 days, you can specify +N days. Read more about +N days.
/c is a command. The key thing we need is actually what we will do with the files. You can also use variables in commands:
@path - shows the full path to the file and its name.
@relpath - shows the path to the file only in the scanned folder.
@file - full file name with extension.
@fname is just the filename, no extension.
@ext is just a filename extension.
@isdir - checking the file type - folder or file. Returns true if a folder, false for files.
@fsize - Returns the size of the file in bytes.
@fdate - Returns the date the file was last modified.
@ftime - returns the last modification time file.

Also, the results of the script execution can be written to a file.

An example of using forfiles is to list all .zip files on disk and write them to a file

The following code will display all your .exe files:
forfiles /p C:\ /m *.exe /s /c "cmd /c echo @path"

If you need to write them to a file, then add a MORE THAN sign at the end and the address where to save the file (it is best to write the full path).
forfiles /p C:\ /m *.exe /s /c "cmd /c echo @path" > D:\all_exefiles.txt

Paste the code in cmd:

The result is the created file on the D:\ drive and its contents (you can find a lot of interesting things):

forfiles example with path, date, size variables

Let's call all our files from the D:\ drive with the .zip extension, and display them on the screen with address, date and size file. We use the script:

forfiles /p D:\ /m *.zip /s /c "cmd /c echo @path changed @fdate and size @fsize bytes"

Here is the result of running the script:

How to delete files older than 10 days

Most often, forfiles is used just for the task of deleting obsolete files. There you are cmd script to delete old files(in the example older than 10 days):
forfiles /p C:\ /m *.rar /s /d -10 /c "cmd /c del @path /q"

How to delete folders older than 7 days using forfiles

In addition to the files themselves, it will not be superfluous to delete folders, especially if they are empty (without files). The code:
forfiles /p C:\downloads /s /d -7 /c "cmd /c rmdir /s del @path /q"
In this example, I have already written 7 days. To delete folders, we use rmdir, the /s key is for scanning subfolders, del is the delete command, /q is deletion without confirmation.

All pages that we view on the Internet are recorded in a special log. And if someone sits down at our computer, he can get in there. And this means that he will be able to see all those places where we went, and even read the correspondence.

Such a journal is called History and, fortunately, entries from it can be deleted.

How to clear history on a computer

Google Chrome. To erase your browsing history in Chrome, you need to click on the button with three dots. It is located in the upper right corner, under the "Close" button (red cross).

Select "History" and then "History" again.

A list of Internet pages that you have recently visited opens. You can remove individual addresses from it. To do this, click on the small arrow button next to the page name and select "Delete from history".

And if you need to remove all pages for some time (for example, for today), click on the clear button at the very top of the list.

A small window will appear. At the top, select a period of time and mark with birds what exactly needs to be removed.

Yandex. To clear the history of visits, click on the small button with horizontal lines in the upper right corner and open the History.

If you need to delete one page, hover over it and click on the small arrow that appears. Select "Remove from history" from the list.

And if you need to erase more data from Yandex, click on "Clear history" on the right above the list of sites.

In the window that appears, select the time interval and indicate what exactly needs to be deleted.

Opera. Menu (top left button) - History

To delete a specific page in the list, hover over it and click on the cross on the right.

If you need to erase more entries, click on "Clear history ..." on the upper right.

In the window, select the time period and data type. It is better to leave three birds, as in the picture below.

Mozilla Firefox. - History - Delete History...

and

In the window, select the time and data that you want to erase. I recommend leaving only three birds, as in the picture:

To delete pages manually (when you need to delete only a couple of addresses), go to the full version of the journal: - Journal - Show the entire journal. And there we already delete by the piece through the right mouse button.

internet explorer. - Security - Delete browsing history…

To clean by day: - "Journal" tab. We delete the necessary pages or days / weeks through the right mouse button.

Important

Thus, we erase log entries, information about downloads and clean up browser memory (pages, photos, videos). But all the passwords and appearances that the program remembers remain in place.

This means that if, for example, you entered your mail or Odnoklassniki / Contact / Facebook without entering any logins and passwords, then everything will remain so. And any person at this computer will be able to do the same: type the address and open your page. That is, he will receive full access - he will be able to read the correspondence, delete something, add something.

To prevent this from happening, you need to erase cookies (cookies) and passwords. And for global cleaning, everything else. This is done by checking certain checkboxes in the delete box.

And all because many users do not remember, and some do not even know their logins and passwords. And after such a cleaning, they can’t enter their pages and mail. And then they write to me: save, help, what to do?! But nothing can be done - before you had to think and connect your mobile number to each page and mail.

How to make sure that sites do not fall into the history

Now every browser has a special private mode, the so-called Incognito. You can open your web application in this mode and then nothing will be recorded. But everything will work as before: sites will open, files will be downloaded, bookmarks will be added.

Immediately after exiting incognito mode, the browser will erase everything that happened there:

• entered passwords
• cookies
• search terms
• URLs of visited pages

Note: this will not protect you from viruses or make you invisible on social networks.

How to open anonymous mode

Google Chrome. - New incognito window

Yandex. - Advanced - New incognito window

Opera. - Create private window

Mozilla Firefox. - Private window

internet explorer. - Security - InPrivate Browsing