How to make a PC safe to sell? EDIT: Appear to have broken it now....

lilmissmup

Right have downloaded dban onto a disc.

I don't have the internet on the old pc so can i download drivemax to a cd/dvd and run it on the old pc or do i need to be online to use that?

lilmissmup

Will do, will burn another one just incase theres an issue.

tradetime

The eraser uses dban doesn't it?

Eraser itself does not use Dban for it's normal erasing tasks, however it used to contain the necessary software to create a dban nuke disc.
I would simply get it from the link I posted above if you intend to use it. There is a tutorial here. But make sure you are confident you have the software to reinstall your OS. It is possible that dban may leave a protected partition such as system recovery, but you would not want to rely on that.

patman99

Acer use DBan to erase the Harddiscs on the PCs they sell, each PC is pre-loaded with a test image containg data, photos & mp3's. Prior to putting the final Windows Vista install on, they DBan the drive to remove their test image.

I found this out after trying to recover some accidentally erased photos on a CF card using Photorec. First time out, I pointed it at the PC's harddrive instead (brand new PC just out of the box), I was quite surprised to discover hundreds of deleted pictures re-appearing.

lilmissmup

Think i am in the poop!

I ran DBAN last night (worked ok as far as i can see apart from this) and am now trying to restore the PC with my Master CD disk but it is telling me it now has a missing glue list and just won't carry on.

I have posted on the packard bell forum for advice too but can anyone help?

My post on packard bell .... http://forum.packardbell.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=57405

mysterio_2

whats the glue part error number? (hmm packard bells have a hidden partition on the HDD for recovery looks like DBAN has erased everything) until that hidden partition is restored the recovery disks wont work

have a read here

http://robertyeates.co.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=glue_part_error

http://www.richardlindley.co.uk/pbtattoo.htm

tradetime

tradetime wrote:

But make sure you are confident you have the software to reinstall your OS. It is possible that dban may leave a protected partition such as system recovery, but you would not want to rely on that.

To be confident you needed to know your recovery software worked by going into it to explore the contents, or ideally running it to see what it did.

mysterio wrote:

hmm packard bells have a hidden partition on the HDD for recovery looks like DBAN has erased everything) until that hidden partition is restored the recovery disks wont work

That'll be gone now then. There's a possibility you could contact Packard bell and explain that after a virus attack your recovery partition has been erased, if you are sure you had one and they may send you a recovery disc solution. If you are unsure, then inquire as to why your current (as you thought) recovery discs won't work, it may transpire you are missing a disc which they can send replacement, or they may explain about a recovery partition at which time you can then inform them that virus damage erased your hdd. They should be able to forward you a disc solution for a nominal fee.

nomoneytoday

You may find that the replacement discs will eat a chunk of the sale price.
Instead I would download and install Ubuntu - it's free

lilmissmup

Right i have been able to put the partition back on the hard drive using the recovery disk.

I am now trying to format it to see if that works but its not giving me the option, it was there when i made the partition but it wouldn't let me select it.

Does anyone know the dos code i need to get it to format the hard drive?

lilmissmup

Right i have been able to put the partition back on the hard drive using the recovery disk.

I am now trying to format it to see if that works but its not giving me the option, it was there when i made the partition but it wouldn't let me select it and said i hard to restart windows (even though its not there!)

Does anyone know the dos code i need to get it to format the hard drive?

I will keep searching in the meantime for help.