[ShaneK]

Greetings, DiC. Long time no see!

Recently a friend of mine has asked me how to best remove all the personal files from her computer before selling it...and I realized I honestly have no idea.

My first thought was wiping the hard drive with CCleaner and a secure wiping mode, but that would mean reinstalling Windows, which would require a product key, which I don't have, and I imagine she doesn't either (since Walmart-bought computers haven't come with CDs for restoring the system in a long time...)

The second thought was going through and manually deleting all the personal files...but what if I miss something? Something vital like tax information due to an oversight?

Surely there has to be software (hopefully freeware/open source) for the job of finding non-vital files.

Anyone ever been in this situation? Any help would be greatly appreciated

Yours,
Shane~

Edit: I really hope I posted this in the right spot...

This post has been edited by ShaneK: 13 January 2012 - 11:42 AM

[tlhIn`toq]

Sell it without a hard drive. The first thing I do when I buy a PC is nuke it anyway. I don't trust the seller didn't put a virus on it to later learn *my* personal info.
Whatever drive it came with is not hte current state of the art. If I bought a used PC today, the next purchase would be a new 3.5tb drive, or two.

You should have a product key if the installation is legal. There should be a sticker on the PC.

[modi123_1]

Quote

(since Walmart-bought computers haven't come with CDs for restoring the system in a long time...)

No one does anymore, but they allow you to make one set of cds/dvds as a restore.. so why not create them.. blast the drive, and move on?

[ShaneK]

If I make one of those backups now does it only back up the OS?

Yours,
Shane~

[modi123_1]

Yeah.. should... it should be from the recovery partition..

[xCraftyx]

I did this same thing for a friend, he wanted to sell his computer without any recoverable data on the drive. I used DBAN to do it securely. However you'll still need the Windows install discs

[ccubed]

tlhIn`toq, on 13 January 2012 - 11:50 AM, said:

Sell it without a hard drive. The first thing I do when I buy a PC is nuke it anyway. I don't trust the seller didn't put a virus on it to later learn *my* personal info.
Whatever drive it came with is not hte current state of the art. If I bought a used PC today, the next purchase would be a new 3.5tb drive, or two.

You should have a product key if the installation is legal. There should be a sticker on the PC.

Agreed, Unless I know exactly what was on it, like the one from my school i got, I instantly buy a new HDD and do what I want.

[William_Wilson]

I too always 0 fill the drive and re-install the OS before selling. You can never be too safe.

---

If it's running Windows 7 your key is listed under Control Panel\System and Security\System also found by right clicking on My Computer and selecting properties. It's at the bottom.

Otherwise I've had a lot of luck with ProduKey:
http://www.nirsoft.n...key_viewer.html
to discover the key from computer such as yours. You can then use a disc from /any/ source of the correct OS

[RetardedGenius]

If you really want to ensure that there is nothing left on your HDD you can nuke it, as tlhIn`toq previously mentioned. I would suggest using Boot and Nuke. Note that it will take quite a while to complete a full run!

[ShaneK]

modi123_1, on 13 January 2012 - 02:03 PM, said:

Quote

(since Walmart-bought computers haven't come with CDs for restoring the system in a long time...)

No one does anymore, but they allow you to make one set of cds/dvds as a restore.. so why not create them.. blast the drive, and move on?

It turns out it's Windows Vista and it doesn't have a tool to make a set of DVDs to restore it, so I'd actually need a Vista installation disk...which I don't have.

Still haven't wiped the machines yet.

Any ideas?

Yours,
Shane~

[modi123_1]

Really? Which company built the machine?

http://www.techrepub...recovery-cd/622

[ShaneK]

Toshiba (Also, both machines are exactly the same)

Edit:
Anddddddd I've seen those posts, but those are recovery CDs, not for after the entire OS is gone They're just slimmed down versions of the installation CDs without the installation part. So they wouldn't work for this

Yours,
Shane~

This post has been edited by ShaneK: 27 January 2012 - 11:03 AM

[modi123_1]

I call shenanigans. Did you, or this user, uninstall the recovery utility? Is there a small partition drive with this on there?

Basically, what I want you to find is this:

Quote

Some Toshiba notebook computer models have a Toshiba HDD Recovery Utility, which is stored in a special partition on the hard disk drive, along with the system files used for the 'recovery' of the hard disk drive to its original just-from-the-factory default state (contents).

http://aps2.toshiba-...02140000R01.htm

[ShaneK]

That guide doesn't apply to this laptop, but I think this laptop actually did come with re-installation CDs and I just didn't see them before...

This computer must be older than I thought...

Anyway, I think this is solved for now. Thanks for the help...

Edit:

Also, really sorry for the anti-climactic ending, thanks for ALL of the help! And I'm not sure if I should trust these CDs, they don't restore from a partition, right? So I should be good even if I use DBAN, correct? I need to be sure before I nuke it

Edit 2:

Everything worked out great! Thanks for the help!

Yours,
Shane~

This post has been edited by ShaneK: 28 January 2012 - 11:41 AM