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A related problem you may be able to help me with. I?m sharing Toshiba laptop and want to make sure I can void my browsing history after use. By hitting the Start button I?ve brought up an Internet Properties box. Under the section titled Browsing history there?s an option marked with a clock face and a reverse arrow over the dial. Next to it it says ?Delete temporary files, history, cookies, saved passwords, and web form information?. There?s a box below it to click in with ?Delete browsing history on exit?.
Will this be enough to delete the record of the sites I?ve visited? Just how full proof is it? As always, thanks for taking the trouble to help.

As I explained in my previous post (May-23-13 18:08) if you are using the Microsoft IE browser, and clicking "Tools" and choosing the very first item ("delete browsing history....") that window opens up (I had posted a screen capture of that window), if you choose the first 5 items on that list, which should be already checked off automatically, then it will take only a few seconds/minutes (depending how much junk there is to delete) for the system to complete those tasks. The system will do a pretty good job of deleting "browsing history", web sites you have visited, and removing temporary files (those files you or previous user tried to download but was unsuccessful for some reason or other).
You asked whether those files will be deleted permanently. I cannot speak of this issue since I am not a computer techie. Forensic experts (Police, military, private security firms, etc) may be technically advanced to recover such supposedly deleted files from a PC's hard drive. There are software programs that claim to accomplish permanent deletion, but I have no clue how valid thoseclaims are.
However your concern seems to be (from the few things you have posted) that you have used a friend's PC and you downloaded certain things and visited certain web sites, you do not wish that person to know about. Assuming that we are speaking about perhaps legal porn, by doing what I suggested should take care of the problem.
Beyond that I do not know since you have not detailed the extent of your concerns.

Re the history-deletion: my understanding is that 'cleaning' programs or options
will work for all normal purposes- i.e. anything not involving a specific search-
algorithm.
As Len says, forensic hackers may still be able to trace the data- but this seems
in your case to be an extremely unlikely contingency.

If you're downloading stuff via someone else's laptop you might consider
investing in a flash-drive; for a very few bob you can d/l directly to that and
carry your stuff around in a pocket. With an average size nowadays of 10-20G,
that's quite a few hours' worth of smut [OTOH, I've just upped my own external
storage-capacity from 5 TB to 9- that's something like 5,000 3-hr videos in the
space of two shoe-boxes- ain't technology wonderful?]....

I don't know much about flash drives JJ, but Trash Crash's problems (at least from I what I understand from his few posts) seem to be related to:
=removing evidence from web sites he has been visited/searched for
=removing evidence from a playlist that displays from whatever video player he has viewed some clips/movies on.
While you can download a video file/pictures directly to a flash drive, at some point you want to examine/view them, and if the only way he can do that is with the Toshiba laptop he seems to share with a friend, then he needs to hide evidence of having played such video clips through that PC.
Anyway sharing a laptop is probably never a good idea for the parties involved, as neither one will really know (unless you are a super techie) what the other party has been up to. If the material downloaded is problematic (illegal porn, obscene material, hate material, material protected by copyright, etc) it will difficult to prove who did what when.

Yeah, it would be a lot simpler if he just bought his own lappy... perhaps we
should have a whip-round : -))

If they can raise $200,000 to try to buy a video of a large city mayor supposedly smoking crack cocaine,

we should be able to set up a fund drive to "save private stan crash"!

Thank you so much for all of your kind endeavours. Len and JJ. I'll probablly end up getting a laptop, but I thought it would be good if I could work it out for myself, with you help. It's so nice to know you've got friends. After all what I'm wanting to look at is totally legal and not against the law. I'm not interested in the illegal stuff as it happens.
After Ive absorbed all your comments I'll write again if I've any more questions.
So much thanks,
Stan

The trouble with borrowing things like laptops is that they're so intensely
personal [or do I mean personalized?] that it usually becomes akin to borrowing
someone's underpants : -))

JJ's Third Law of IT:
"Everyone, without exception, has things on their hard-drive that they would not
be entirely happy for the general public to see".

To clean MRU (Most Recently Use) use WISE REGISTRY CLEANER and/or CCLEANER

To surf without trace use FIREFOX and OPEN A PRIVATE SESSION.

MF said this:
<To surf without trace use FIREFOX and OPEN A PRIVATE SESSION.


Microsoft [n]Internet Explorer[/b] seems to accomplish this same task.
Always in the "Tools" section, the second line called "InPrivate Browsing" it says the following:
When InPrivate Browsing is turned on, you will see this indicator

InPrivate in the address bar

InPrivate Browsing helps prevent Internet Explorer from storing data about your browsing session. This includes cookies, temporary Internet files, history, and other data. Toolbars and extensions are disabled by default. See Help for more information.

To turn off InPrivate Browsing, close this browser window.
So Firefox is not really exclusive in this type of task.