How do I 'wipe' tower hard drive?

SnowWhiterThanWhite

Hi,

My in-laws decided to get rid of their (barely used) tower PC.
It is currently sitting in my garage - I thought I'd be able to 'recycle' it through friends/family, but can't even give it away!

It has windows ME on it, and although they never used for things like shopping/banking, I know there are several files on there containing e-mails & photos.

Firstly, is there a 'simple' way I can take the whole system back to factory settings AND other than taking it to my local tip, can anyone advise where it can be recycled?

Thanks

bitsandpieces

This is probably easiest, if it has a floppy drive http://www.dban.org/ It will wipe all data. This will leave the hard disk blank - I'd just pass it onto the person who gets it with setup disks (assuming you still have this).

Put it on Freecycle and someone will almost certainly take it.

nottseagull

You could wipe the whole thing (there's so much now that you can't do with Windows ME) and install a modern, free Linux OS such as Ubuntu. If there's not much RAM then there are other free OSs that you could run on it. The new owner could increase the (no doubt tiny) storage with a USB drive.

googler

SnowWhiterThanWhite wrote: »

Firstly, is there a 'simple' way I can take the whole system back to factory settings AND other than taking it to my local tip, can anyone advise where it can be recycled?

Thanks

Recycle it at the tip - they usually have a section for small electricals, and suchlike.

Take the HDD out of the tower before you take it away to the tip. Keep the HDD, and use it as a secondary drive in yours or another system.

Format it after you install it.

jayme1

http://www.killdisk.com/ download the iso, burn to a disc, the free version will do one pass zeros which you can repeat if you want. they also have floppy disc versions for pcs without a CD drive, and it supports all the old DOS and IDE drives.

momoyama

Don't just bin it; senseless waste of something that someone could be very grateful for. Follow the advice above about clearing the drive, then install a new OS. hopefully you'll have the rescue CD to do this. It's actually not hard

googler

Take the drive out and put it on eBay, Gumtree or Freecycle, someone's bound to want it, even without the HDD that you've removed.....

gonzo127

depending on the spec's i would also agree one of the free Linux OS's would be best

Xubuntu or Lubuntu would be my recommendations as they both have a decent support network online, although puppy linux or peppermint one/ice would also be worth looking into. as these all have low system requirments so should work on a system that still has ME on

the other one would be to pop it on free cycle without the hard drive

JJ_Egan

factory settings if its an OEM windows it should have the sticker on the side with serial number .
Handbook should have details of factory restore or their will be recovery discs with it .
Usually on a mass produced OEM machine the factory settings and Windows are on a hidden recovery partition .

No books etc GOOGLE > Make and model factory restore instructions .

jje

gonzo127

just remember or try to take into account if you restore Windows, that Windows ME has not been supported since July 2006