Whether I try to manually erase them or use a program like windows washer, there seems to be no way to completely erase my guilty tracks from Windows Mail in Vista Home.
I can't even open the log file to see if that's where the tell-tale record resides; I get a message saying that the file is in use by another program.
Anyone know of a way to really clean the "leftovers" in Mail?

As many large corporation CEO's have found out, there is no 100% way of obliterating your tracks. Their prison sentences attest to this fact. If someone has access to your computer, and they have the programs, determination and fortitude to do so, they will likely find what you think is gone. I have successfully retrieved term papers that were deleted two weeks prior to my recovering them.
All you can do is wash the unoccupied space within a partition and hope for the best. Search Google for file washer, disk wiping etc.
search.live.com/results.aspx?q=disk+wiping&src=IE-SearchBox


Regards,
Richard Urban Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
Quote from George Ankner: If you knew as much as you think you know, You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
"Miller McClure"

"Richard Urban"

It can take dozens of overwrites to fully cover tracks.

Julian wrote:

How good is cipher at removing traces? I ran cipher with the /W switch against a drive and it seems to do 3 passes so I'm dubious about its effectiveness.

ONLY 1 PASS WITH MY ACETYLENE TORCH SEEMS TO DO THE TRICK...ON CUT...LOL
"Julian"

"Neil Harley"

Superficially it will be clean but for someone with sufficiently sensitive techniques the data can be recovered. I've seen one cleaner advertised that claims to perform 297 overwrites to meet some NATO standards. Meanwhile here is a paper on the subject.... cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html