clean hard drive

[marysuem]

How do I clean this laptop but need to keep the OS and Microsoft Office

 

[wrathofdragon]

what brand is your laptop?

if its HP or Compaq there is a "Factory Restore" feature that resets the laptop to factory condition

>>Its always helpful to show specs/brand/system Properties screenshots, or some other identifying information<<

 

[spooky2th]

Just reinstall windows, the drivers and then Office. Plus any other programs that you use. Save all the data that you do not want to lose so that you can install it once your laptop is back up and running.

 

[wrathofdragon]

Just reinstall windows, the drivers and then Office. Plus any other programs that you use. Save all the data that you do not want to lose so that you can install it once your laptop is back up and running.

marysuem may not have the original disks for windows/office...

 

[USAFRet]

You can't really clean it 'partway'. The registry contains more things than you think.

Why are we doing this?

 

[scoobnoob]

You should be able to go into the BIOS and boot menus and boot to a recovery partition. You'll have to push F... to get to the menu. From there, you should be ably to boot to the recovery partition. You should be able to go right in to that partition and select something like, " RESTORE FACTORY DEFAULTS". IF YOU PURCHASED OFFICE SEPARATELY THIS WILL NOT WORK! (Unless it came preinstalled from factory)

Otherwise, I would go into the system folder for Microsoft Office, copy that ENTIRE directory, and move that to your "fresh" install.

 

[popatim]

You can't really clean it 'partway'. The registry contains more things than you think.

Why are we doing this?

I agree.
if reinstalling back to the factory installation is not an option then all you can do is use Add/Remove programs to uninstall everything you don't want on it anymore. You probably should run a registry sweeper/cleaner after that, such as ccleaner:
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

 

[USAFRet]

I don't know about 'perfectly'.
As said...the registry can contain a LOT of info.

Some years ago, I bought a PC on the reject rack at WorstBuy. After asking both the salesman and the GeekSquad dude whether it had been wiped and reinstalled, they both said "YES!"

Getting it home and poking around in the registry, there was the original guys info. Name, address, phone number, credit card number.
Now...CCleaner had obviously not been run on this, nor had it been wiped. But I don't think it would be able to differentiate between a reg key containing Jim Jones @ 123 Main St (prev owner), and a reg key containing Mary Smith @ 47 Elm St (new owner), as to what to 'remove' from the registry.


The question remains - Why are you needing to do this?

 

[spooky2th]

If you have the activation numbers, you can always download the software and activate it. Just like windows' activation.