Cleaning out a laptop

[jhk1220]

I'm selling my old XPS M1710 and I'd like to make sure I wipe it clean of personal info. I would do a clean Windows install, but I don't have a recovery disk anymore. Is there any other reliable way to ensure I wipe it of personal data?

It came from the factory with PCRestore installed on a recovery partition, which claims it will restore to from factory condition. The recovery partition also has the OS (Vista) installed on it.

I'm thinking of running the utility, then nuking the data storage partition with some tool to zero it out or what not. Would this work?
And with Internet Explorer being installed on the recovery drive, is there any way to manually inspect the recovery drive for personal information that may have been stored there?

 

[Guest]

If in your browser you select clear personal history and delete bookmarks, that should wipe any traces of sites you've visited.

Obviously run Search and delete any JPGs,BMPs GIFs, movies (ahem) you might have downloaded.

Clear all documents generated with word processor, spreadsheet etc.

Get Easycleaner or similar which will get rid of more stuff.

A clean Windows install is a good idea -- but not that necessary I wouldn't have thought.

 

[sidewinderx2]

I'm selling my old XPS M1710 and I'd like to make sure I wipe it clean of personal info. I would do a clean Windows install, but I don't have a recovery disk anymore. Is there any other reliable way to ensure I wipe it of personal data?

It came from the factory with PCRestore installed on a recovery partition, which claims it will restore to from factory condition. The recovery partition also has the OS (Vista) installed on it.

I'm thinking of running the utility, then nuking the data storage partition with some tool to zero it out or what not. Would this work?
And with Internet Explorer being installed on the recovery drive, is there any way to manually inspect the recovery drive for personal information that may have been stored there?

If your recovery partition serves as your "install disk", you can just reformat your regular partition, zero it out, then recover it to factory condition with the recovery partition. The recovery partition should not have any personal info on it.

 

[jhk1220]

Thanks all.

 

[jhk1220]

Ack...follow up question.

Any recommendations on zeroizing software?

Another, more Cro-Magnon solution I've heard is of restoring and formatting the regular drive, filling it with large files to capacity, then deleting, repeating the process a few times.

Not looking to spoof the DoJ or NSA, but I do want to make recovering my personal information more trouble than it's worth to your average hacker.

 

[sidewinderx2]

Ack...follow up question.

Any recommendations on zeroizing software?

Another, more Cro-Magnon solution I've heard is of restoring and formatting the regular drive, filling it with large files to capacity, then deleting, repeating the process a few times.

Not looking to spoof the DoJ or NSA, but I do want to make recovering my personal information more trouble than it's worth to your average hacker.

I haven't used one in a long time, but you can try this open source one: http://eraser.heidi.ie/