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Software for clearing down a computer

  • 02-12-2008 9:02pm
    #1
    JordanDC
    Closed Accounts Posts: 89 ✭✭


    Does anyone know of a piece of software that will delete all personal information off of my laptop?

    I need to sell it so I would really appreciate suggestions on how to best tune it etc so it's like new for selling.


Comments

  • #2
    Alanstrainor
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 23,157 ✭✭✭✭Alanstrainor


    Moved from laptops.
    Not really a laptops issues as such.
    Anyway, why dont you format the drive and do a fresh install of xp/vista?


  • #3
    daftdave
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,082 ✭✭✭daftdave


    only way you are gonna really remove all personal data and ship it on as new is format the drive and reload your operating system onto the drive again , and just to make you ultra paranoid , it might be still possible to retrieve data from your drive if the right person knew what they were doing, even after a format.
    if you are going to format and reload the operating system, make sure you have your drivers cd so as to get all your hardware working properly again after the format.


  • #4
    uch
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,020 ✭✭✭uch


    Debug the drive and reinstall, debug rewrites the sectors on the disk and makes it very difficult to recover anything, you can get the script here
    http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?docid=07302457082C47EDA1A8F9619885F51F&c=us&l=en&s=gen

    21/25



  • #5
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 93,562 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    uch wrote: »
    Debug the drive and reinstall, debug rewrites the sectors on the disk and makes it very difficult to recover anything, you can get the script here
    http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?docid=07302457082C47EDA1A8F9619885F51F&c=us&l=en&s=gen
    That script just deletes the partition table,
    run testdisk and you'll recover everything.


  • #6
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 93,562 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    JordanDC wrote: »
    Does anyone know of a piece of software that will delete all personal information off of my laptop?

    I need to sell it so I would really appreciate suggestions on how to best tune it etc so it's like new for selling.
    windows and windows apps squirrel data all over the place
    swap files / hibernation files contain stuff that was in RAM
    the registry is littered with stuff, every app has it's own idea about what to leave in temp files and in settings files

    short version you can't be 100% sure of removing all your personal data from a machine unless you wipe 100% of the drive

    www.dban.org which will wipe all data, but you would have to install windows and all the drivers again

    if you don't mind a risk of data leaking then ccleaner will remove a lot of the obvious stuff


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