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How do I erase hard drive and save XP OS

D

dundevil

Member
I have an HP with XP. I have the 8 recovery CDs that I made years ago.

I want to erase the HD so that I can give the computer to a friend.

1. Could you please recommend a program to erase.

2. Most important, how do I put XP OS back on the machine.
 
DBAN (http://www.dban.org/) to wipe it.

And to put the XP OS back on...did the laptop come with an Operating System disk? I'm not sure what the recovery CDs are that you made...but you'll probably just want to get your hands on an HP OEM windows installation CD.
 
If you use Dban, be careful. If you have more than one hard drive, make sure to disconnect the hard drive that you do not want to erase.

You could just let Windows format it using the full format option and then reinstall Windows.
 
seepy83 said:
But be aware that this does not erase all of your data. Some (lots) of it could be recoverable.
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Sure, but that's assuming his friend is technologically adept, and a criminal. Personally I'd just format it, and reinstall Windows.
 
After I reformat, how do I re -install XP?

I only have the 8 recovery disks that I made, The computer did not come with a separate XP system disk. XP was factory installed.

The disk also has a factory D: partition with recovery program on it
 
lxskllr said:
Sure, but that's assuming his friend is technologically adept, and a criminal. Personally I'd just format it, and reinstall Windows.
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Criminal? Are you a lawyer? Because i'm not sure that it's criminal to access data on something that you own.
 
seepy83 said:
Criminal? Are you a lawyer? Because i'm not sure that it's criminal to access data on something that you own.
Click to expand...

I've said it in million threads around here, but I don't care about the law. The law doesn't determine what's right or wrong, only what's legal and illegal. Those laws were created by people who aren't the brightest bulbs, and are many times bought out by outside interests.

All that's OT though, and unless his friend is a criminal, he won't be poking around the drive trying to recover stuff he knows isn't meant to be recovered. You aren't going to accidentally recover deleted data. You're going to seek out, and use very specific tools to intrude on the OP's privacy. If that's the kind of "friend" he has, maybe is is better to wipe the drive, and distance himself from that "friend" in the process, because he'll end up stabbed in the back one day.
 
You could do the HP recovery, then run Ccleaner with the "wipe free space" option checked. That should make the data unrecoverable.
 
chemwiz said:
You could do the HP recovery, then run Ccleaner with the "wipe free space" option checked. That should make the data unrecoverable.
Click to expand...

I second this suggestion. It is probably the easiest to accomplish without totally hosing the hard drive.

Plus, I think that once the system is recovered the new owner will be able to generate a set of recovery discs of his own after it has been returned to factory specs.
 
If you are permanantly handing over a harddrive (whether in a computer or not), you should ALWAYS do a security wipe. The reason is simple. You simply don't know who will have access to it over the life of the drive and "undelete" and "restoration" software is easily gotten. Financial information, passwords, social information, pictures, chat logs....even porn...there are too many things that can be left over lying dorment that can come back to bite you.

You trust your friend, but when it comes to this sort of thing you shouldn't trust anyone. It's about privacy, not law.
 
Well, if it's old, it probably has a very cheap HD at today's prices. Get a new HD and set it up for him keeping in mind that you want a similar size HD that will be supportedd by the BIOS. Reinstall from your disks, it should run like it did on its birthday

Then find a twenty-five ton press and smash the old drive and cut it up with a cutting torch. That will get rid of the school plans, weapons caches, photos of genitals in the email out folder as well as the pictures and phone numbers girls have sent you.

I hope this helps. Testing labs have some incredible presses for testing construction materials.
 
Something to consider is that some of these OEM pc have recovery partitions and wiping the drive can remove that partition. So if you do not have all the disc to do the install you will end up with a pc with no OS.

Make sure those 8cd you have will fully restore the OS before you wipe any partitions.


Wiping just the free space may seem quick but it isn't removing all personal data.Not even if you go through and delete files you saved first. Windows has a couple mechanisms built into it mainly for recovering from failures. It has 2 copies of the registry at all times. So you have to remove the backup and any information that the current registry contains that is personal. There is also lots of hidden files that will contain personal information.
 
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Don't wipe the drive - just wipe everything except the REcovery Partition. Then run the Recovery partition. Should result in your machine being in factory fresh condition.

You can also clone the Recovery Partition to another drive - then wipe the transient HDD, and then reclone the recovery partition back to the original location.
 
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