"cleaning laptop" ... prior to selling

pennymakespounds

HP laptop with windows 7 .
About to sell it .


Have deleted all "personal" programs , folders , files, music, photos etc ......


other than AVG/spybot/office


and have run CCleaner ..."tools"....."drive wiper"..." free space" .. ....simple overwrite 1 pass" .


So to me it appears there is absolutely nothing "personal" left on the laptop.


Am i right ??. or is there other things i have to do to wipe it properly ?


thanks

Nick_C

What you have done sounds safe enough to me. If you have an installation disc you could format the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. Personally, I wouldn't.

GunJack

Do you really want to leave Office on there? Extract the licence key and install it on your new machine, especially if it's a "proper" version, not 365. Use Magical Jellybean to find the key....

poppellerant

Myself, I would only be happy if the laptop was completely formatted and Windows reinstalled and updated. This may need factory restore discs or use of a hidden partition where the fresh installation images are tucked away.

Just uninstalling programs isn't enough - sometimes they can leave residual files on the harddrive or entries in the registry.

wongataa

You should use the restore disc/partition to restore the computer to how it was when you ought it.

Catssquirrel

Above is total crap, if you want total security of your data, software solutions are rubbish (read Snowden!). Mechanical destruction is the only answer.

peace-maker

I would do a factory install, and then wipe the free space with 'Eraser' standalone. This can wipe the same data over and over (to US MOD specifications).

gjchester

GunJack wrote: »

Do you really want to leave Office on there? Extract the licence key and install it on your new machine, especially if it's a "proper" version, not 365. Use Magical Jellybean to find the key....

The latest office versions don't store the entire key in the registry, only a segment (last 5 characters), they remove it after install.


Its enough for you to identify which key was in use, but not enough to move it to another machine.

Catssquirrel wrote: »

Above is total crap, if you want total security of your data, software solutions are rubbish (read Snowden!). Mechanical destruction is the only answer.

Meh, A good multi-pass wipe will erase the data beyond the scope of recovery for most people. If the government is that interested in you they'll already have infiltrated your device and have copies of the files, in which case mechanical destruction is not going to make any difference..

poppellerant

Catssquirrel wrote: »

Above is total crap, if you want total security of your data, software solutions are rubbish (read Snowden!). Mechanical destruction is the only answer.

One problem - mechanical destruction isn't at all practical as the OP is about to sell the computer.

Bowling_4_Gold

poppellerant wrote: »

One problem - mechanical destruction isn't at all practical as the OP is about to sell the computer.

Destroy original hard drive, install new hard drive. Cost: perhaps £35 depending on size of HDD that replaces the original. Reward: peace of mind that future owner has no access to any personal data.

bsod

Alternatively follow commonsense (peacemaker) instead of trolls, save £35.

If the squirrel returns perhaps they will outline exactly how they would get access to data that has been overwritten, if they happened to purchase this second hand laptop

windows7 is relatively new, the machine probably has a sizeable hard disk, destroying it is ridiculous.