I took two laptops in trade, and I want to wipe all user data off of them, while preserving the existing Windows XP installations.
What is the simplest way to do this? I don’t have Install discs for either of the machines (which is why I want to keep the system intact).
ETA: this includes wiping any user-specific settings, like the computer name…
I’ve never found a way to change the name of the user directory without re-installing XP. Even if you change the name of the user, XP keeps the old name on the user directory, if it was the first user created.
If the account you login with is different from the Administrator account, then you might login as Administrator, go into Local Users and Groups and delete your user account. But I can’t be sure that all of your data will be gone.
The last two laptops I have owned can be restored to their factory default configuration using a hidden partition on the disk drive. You have to enable boot messages when the laptop starts to see which keys to press, but when the laptop boots you can select this option. It will wipe the disk (except for its hidden restore partition) and will re-install the factory disk image, which contains the OS, drivers, and whatever software was bundled with the laptop.
Do your laptops have this option?
Getting rid of everything personal that can be on a laptop is an extremely time consuming process and you really have to go digging.
If I were you I would invest in some time trying to find the the xp iso online and download it so you can install using the legitimate key on the pc.
Well, I have an XP install disc.
I’m just worried about any laptop-specific drivers for these machines.
One of them is a monster Alienware laptop the size of a basilisk.
Renaming the computer is easy enough – just go to Control Panel/Sytem/Computer Name.
For users, just create a new admin user, then log into the new account and delete the old accounts. It will ask if you want to keep the old user’s files or not.
This
you can also just delete the old profile folder once you have created another admin user.
You could back up the drivers first.
I’ve found Double Driver http://boozet.org/dd.htm works well.
Well, I just decided to create a new admin user, and delete all the other users. I also had to delete a bunch of data in the “data” directory at the root of the drive. I then used CCleaner to wipe free space.
At this point, I think it’s sufficiently clean to sell, unless anyone has any suggestions on other places to wipe.
If that’s not a cue for a bad punchline I don’t know what is.
Well, this is a PeeCee we’re talking about…
you can look online for the model number and Google will most likely throw you to the official drivers page from the manufacturer website most of the time when I do those searches the manufacturer still has ALL the drivers available for download. I am a computer enthusiast so that’s my only option I need a sanitized PC. And if it’s just to sell I would still try and do that because I would think that it being freshly formatted and worth a tiny bit more to whoever gets it next but then again I am a computer enthusiast.
It depends how paranoid you want to get. As engineer_comp_geek, it’s difficult to eradicate every last trace. Stuff can lurk in hiberfil.sys (used by the hibernation feature, basically a snapshot of RAM at the time of the last hibernation), pagefil.sys (page file contain data temporarily swapped out of RAM), the registry…
You can do things like temporarily disable hibernation, reboot (which will get rid of hiberfil.sys) and then wipe free space. Then re-enable hibernation if needed.
Well, it’s not my data, so I don’t care very much…
I just want to make a good-faith effort to clean it before I sell it.
I think you’ve done enough. Really, it was up to the person who sold it to you. If there was anything on it that was private, that should have never made it to your hands in the first place.