Lunac Posted May 23, 2006 Share Posted May 23, 2006 Hi. I am selling my laptop on ebay and I was wondering how can I remove all traces of personal data and personlization. I already removed all the installed programs. Are there any tools that can do that? You know, clean the registry, wipe the disk, etc?I would appreciate any assistance.Title edited -- Please, use [TAGS] in your topic's title.--Sonic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trickytwista Posted May 23, 2006 Share Posted May 23, 2006 these be of use to you... http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedelete.shtml Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
net_user Posted May 23, 2006 Share Posted May 23, 2006 kill disk on that link provided...i have used in the past to wright 1's and 0's to the hd if i'm selling on e-bay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunac Posted May 23, 2006 Author Share Posted May 23, 2006 Hi. I don't need complete wipe. Just removal of peronsal data. XP needs to stay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sonic Posted May 23, 2006 Share Posted May 23, 2006 You can't really delete ALL your personnal data.I think you have already deleted My Documents, My Pictures, My music , My Video.You can use CCleaner to delete hisotry of IE , Cache and many traces of standard programs ...You can create a new user (session) and after login with this, and delete the old account, and delete the old account in Documents & Settings too.But it's not cleaned fully, you don't know where some personal data is stored. There are always traces ... The best is to format/reinstall (or restore/master) the system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdogg Posted May 23, 2006 Share Posted May 23, 2006 (edited) but even formating, doesn't clean all the data to a point that in cant be recovered easily. Edited May 23, 2006 by gdogg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trickytwista Posted May 23, 2006 Share Posted May 23, 2006 good tip, wipe the drive with a tool from link provided, and the reinstall xp, that way you can be sure non is recoverable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DL. Posted May 23, 2006 Share Posted May 23, 2006 I agree with others that wiping the drive and reinstalling Windows is the best solution.The wipe-tools mentioned use only one-pass overwrite with zeros (which is probably enough).If you want total and non-recoverable data erase you can use:CBL Data ShredderIt's free and only requires a simple registration.The program can overwrite the data up to 35 times (!), which is overkill even for most government agencies (drives containing top-secret data must be physically destroyed). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdogg Posted May 24, 2006 Share Posted May 24, 2006 east-tec eraser has an option to wipe, free hard drive spacethat way, even if you deleted it already, it cant be recovered Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LLXX Posted May 24, 2006 Share Posted May 24, 2006 Random data, 2 passes, is enough for most hard drives and security purposes (they will still be able to recover the data, but I don't think the buyer is going to want to buy your laptop just to get your data Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefoxthebomb Posted May 24, 2006 Share Posted May 24, 2006 everyone will have thier favorite tool to use. I like using Drive Scrubber once you run this tool, you will have to reload the system back to factory restore. I would go that route because if you just delete files they can always be recovered with stuff like get data back for example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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