[kh99]

I think you need to find each template that contains the controls and edit it to make the "hard delete" button checked. For instance one place is in template threadadmin_deletethread, if you search for "checked" you'll find where soft delete is selected by default, and if you look a little further down you'll see the {vb:rawphrase physically_remove} that labels the hard delete option radio button. You could move the checked="checked" from one <input> tag to the other.

One thing that might help is to temporarily turn on the "Add Template Name in HTML Comments" (under General Settings). That way you can view the html source and figure out which template the controls are in (I think in most cases it's probably in the main template, the one mentioned in the <!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: comment at the top).