Automatically clear your pagefile at shutdown in Windows XP or 2000.

By Sarah Lane

Hey everybody! I know you’re not the kind of people who would do shady things on your computer. No sir! Me neither. That said, it’s always nice to know someone won’t get onto your machine, browse through your data history, and get you into hot water.

Pagefile, along with your computer’s physical memory, makes up your virtual memory. Like a paper trail, it stores a lot of data and may include sensitive stuff such as unencrypted passwords and other entered/accessed data.

If you’re concerned about computer security, have Windows clear the pagefile on shutdown. You’ll need to go into your Registry, so back it up before you start just in case you make a mistake.

Start the Registry Editor by clicking Start, Run, and type “regedit” (without quotes).

Go to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

On the right, locate the ClearPageFileAtShutdown value. Right-click the value, select modify, and change the data value of the registry key to 1.

If the ClearPageFileAtShutdown value doesn’t exist, add it. Right-click the right side of your specified key and add it as a DWORD value. Then change the data value to 1.

Restart for your changes to take effect.

Note: Your shutdown time may slightly increase.