Wiping laptop without recovery disc?

beachbeth

My daughter is trading in her HP laptop for a brand new one at PC World. We typically can't find her recovery discs or Windows Vista discs anywhere (we've found all the discs for laptops we no longer own though!!!).

The laptop wont let me burn any recovery discs because it says I already have and you can only burn one set??? However, its giving me the option to put the laptop back to factory condition. Will this go ahead without the recovery disc and will this be enough to wipe the laptop?

stuartk

Why do you need the recovery disks if you are handing it back.

The factory restore should be ok but if you want to be doubly sure then wipe the partition with something like Dban, being careful NOT to wipe the recovery partition.

Regards

beachbeth

I want to wipe the laptop for security reasons.

If I use dban how do I then reinstall vista from the recovery partition. Is it simple to do?

davb

If you use dban it will probably trash the recovery partition as well, so you would need recovery disks. What you could do, but long winded, is to run the factory restore from the recovery partition, boot to the new Windows, and then create the recovery disks - this time it should let you, as it's a new install. You could then use dban, and after that restore from the new recovery disks.

beachbeth

Ive done the factory restore and tried to create the recovery discs and it still knows Ive already done it and won't let me do it again. It was worth a try though.

stuartk

What do you need the recovery disks for?

Regards

davb

beachbeth wrote: »

Ive done the factory restore and tried to create the recovery discs and it still knows Ive already done it and won't let me do it again. It was worth a try though.

Shame. I did find this on a Google search that may reset the created status - it may work

find the two items named hpcd.sys and rename to hpcd.bak. one is located in the system recovery folder. the other is in the windows /sminst folder. this should allow you to create another set. use at own caution.

Otherwise you could look at running dban on the C: partition, but be careful.

beachbeth

stuartk wrote: »

What do you need the recovery disks for?

Regards

To reinstall windows vista after Ive run dban

Millionaire

The recovery partition would have restored the Laptop to the factory state and deleted all your programs and files.

So all you really need to do is wipe the free space. You can use CCleaner to overwrite and wipe the free space on the laptop.

The only other thing is to disable system restore via 'My Computer' which will delete all previous restore points as well.

stuartk

Is there a recovery partition on this system?

If so run dban or something similar on the partition you want to wipe then restore via the recovery partition when the system boots up - usually F11 on HP.

Double check first

Regards

closed

Dban will wipe the lot, you do not want to use it in this situation, all you need to do is wipe free space on all drives, using eraser (ccleaner only does c drive and doesn't do cluster tips).