Personal Stuff on Window XP?
Community Forums/General Help/Personal Stuff on Window XP?
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| Hiya there, I am selling Laptop to someone but I need to clear passwords and personal stuff(such as credit cards,internet or anythings) this is what I have done I have clear the history in Internet expore and firefox. I have also remove the passport in firefox. What else do I need to get rid of before I gave the laptop to them? |
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| Format the drive and reinstall Windows. |
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| I see but I dont have Window XP CD and it is Netbook computer(it got no cd drive) that i selling |
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| Get yourself ccleaner and take a look what it offers to delete for you. Last edited 2010 |
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| Keep in mind that it's trivial to undelete deleted information: When you 'delete' something, all it does is mark the file as deleted in the file allocation table. All the actual *contents* of the files are still stored on the disk. Undeleters can spot these removed files, and re-enable them, regardless of whether or not they're visible in the recycle bin. If you're selling your computer to someone you don't know or can't trust, the ONLY way to securely remove your information is to completely wipe the drive (there's special disk cleaner tools that will make the data un-recoverable), and *reinstall the operating system from scratch* using the restore media that came with the computer afterwards. just deleting files/folders from within windows may keep grandma from finding them, but anyone who knows what they're doing will be able to recover most (or even all) of it. |
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| I see but I dont have Window XP CD and it is Netbook computer(it got no cd drive) that i selling Well, check the documents to see if you can reset via any system utility on startup... Or, when you first turn on the laptop, just check any options available on the boot screen. If not, then just go to the manufacturers website/forum and ask them! Dabz Last edited 2010 |
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| CCleaner (already mentioned a couple of posts up) includes a "secure delete" option (disabled by default, for performance) that does the old multiple-overwrites-with-random-data trick, and the option (also disable by default) to apply this to free space on a disk after cleaning. It also offers a full drive wipe utility... although you'll have to get creative to run that on your system drive. However CCleaner is only a cleaning utility, as will be any others - unless you actually do wipe the drive and reinstall, you'll be deleting your personal files by hand. Being sure to get them all may be harder than you think. |
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| Grind your hard drive into powder, then buy a replacement HD and install your OS on it. EDIT - or melt it down, that'd be pretty irreversible too! Last edited 2010 |
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| What xlsior said is pretty much good enough for most situation, however even formating the drive and removing the partitions does not delete the data entirely. It leaves a residual magnetic image that can be reconstructed with the right tools. (although this is usually the domain of forensics, intelligence and hackers of caliber) If you are really worried download UBCD (Ultimate boot CD) and use the drive wiper. This will multi pass wipe it to US Dept of defence standard. It will take a few hours to complete but it will be 100% dataless when complete. Last edited 2010 |
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| thanks everyone :) |
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