Is it only the hard drive, and EXTERNAL storage or is there any other memory that is retained?Read about BIOS

Read about CMOS

There is a type of memory called CMOS, which has a battery backup on the motherboard / system board. It holds date and time settings, as well as system configuration settings selected in the BIOS.Don't you trust the answers ALREADY given Here ? ?

We're not here to steer you wrong Dave...I have limited knowledge mate and Patio is right but.. all your passwords from what I know are held in shadow files and are hard as *censored* to retrieve. Thats for a reason. A shadow file from my limited knowledge is a file which cannot be accessed without much difficulty. If you have a password and forget it you can't even retrieve that file because it's held on a shadow file. I may be wrong I'm no expert.there is no "shadow" file, unless you are referring to Vista's Volume shadow copy, but that only duplicates files- I'm not sure if it duplicates system files though.

Or- you might MEAN a file with the hidden and system attributes. But from what I understand passwords are stored in the registry in some way (obviously not plaintext).

Even in such a case, replacing the hard drive means such files are no longer existent.

In this case the OP has been assured multiple times that data stored in the CMOS does not contain sensitive data, but for some reason persists the issue.

I read up and passwords were supposed to be hidden in 'shadow files' I don't know the meaning of the word but It's like a file ATTACHED to to the main file that you can never see or access. Not trying to say your wrong bc but I did look into this. Not even the main file can look into the 'shadow file', does that make sense?? From what I have learnt it's nye on impossible to get passwords out of a drive.
you know what that might be, is alternate data streams. But I don't think passwords are stored there- although there is a LOT of stuff stored in alternate data streams. (the only way to access them is if you know their names).


Your right about the passwords- and doubly so since they are replacing the drive with a fresh one I already told him this in his first thread

Quote from: Me

davedat, you have been told repeatedly you have nothing to worry about.

In this case the OP has been assured multiple times that data stored in the CMOS does not contain sensitive data, but for some reason persists the issue.

The guilt of goat porn rears its ugly head again