Clear the page file on Shutdown in XP

2009 May 4

by Andy

This is one of those tweaks for XP that is useful if you have users that have a lot of sensitive information on their machines and you want to be sure that none of that information is left in the Page File forever. It’s not a panacea, but is extra piece of mind.

There are many third party apps that will write unencrypted information to the Page File (passwords, userid’s, whatever) and since the Page File is never cleared, just overwritten, that data can stay there forever. Luckily, Windows provides a registry key that you can set so that the Page File is cleared when you shutdown the machine. Since you all have reboot schedules for your sensitive machines (you do, don’t you?) this tweak will ensure that nothing is left to chance. The only downside is that shutdowns will take a bit longer.

In regedit:

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

Modify the ClearPageFileAtShutdown value to ‘1’