Deleting Everything Personal From Laptop - To Sell To Someone Else

pinkemsy

Hi

I've just moved everything across to my new Dell laptop (Inspiron 1501). I will sell my old Inspiron at work, but I want to make sure everything is deleted. I've deleted as many programmes as I can but I know there are things stored all over the place with my personal details on. I've looked in Temp Internet Files and there's nothing there. What can I do/where can I look to ensure my laptop is ready for someone else but contains none of my personal information?

Thanks in advance.

Emma

chuckles1066

pinkemsy wrote: »

Hi

I've just moved everything across to my new Dell laptop (Inspiron 1501). I will sell my old Inspiron at work, but I want to make sure everything is deleted. I've deleted as many programmes as I can but I know there are things stored all over the place with my personal details on. I've looked in Temp Internet Files and there's nothing there. What can I do/where can I look to ensure my laptop is ready for someone else but contains none of my personal information?

Thanks in advance.

Emma

you need to securely wipe the drive and reinstall only the Operating System:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.php

will do what you need

Dave_®f©

You could do control and F11 and take it right back to the factory settings from new. I know you lose all data but I'm unsure if some whizz could interrogate the hard drive for remnants of information.

John_Gray

I would go the Chuckles way, but personally I would use DBAN to wipe the disk, having booted from the DBAN floppy disk or CD.

Before you start, make sure that you have a sticker on the system unit which gives the Windows Authorisation Code (five groups of five alphabetic and numeric characters), because you'll have to re-enter that to get Windows XP to install...

John

chuckles1066

John_Gray wrote: »

I would go the Chuckles way, but personally I would use DBAN to wipe the disk, having booted from the DBAN floppy disk or CD.

Before you start, make sure that you have a sticker on the system unit which gives the Windows Authorisation Code (five groups of five alphabetic and numeric characters), because you'll have to re-enter that to get Windows XP to install...

John

Yes DBAN is mega-secure but I can never get it to work on SATA drives?

Blacksheep1979

second vote for dban but if you're having problems boot from a linux cd and type the following

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda

if its a sata drive or

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda

if its an ide drive.

dickibobboy

Did your laptop come with a recovery cd? If so use DBAN and then use the recovery discs and reinstall windows from it.