Cleaning out my dad's work computer.

[alpine_sc]

This is probably not the right forum, but I don't know where else to post it (in Tom's Hardware). Anyway, about a year ago, my dad got a new computer from his company because it was time for an upgrade. My dad bought the old computer from them for $5 (for home use), but they had to clear out some valuable corporate information. It has really old hardware with Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1. There is a bunch of software that I don't want (and a lot that I do want). I tried uninstalling the programs from Add or Remove Programs, but I can't. For example, a message would appear like "An error occurred while trying to remove Citrix\CA Client. You do not have access to \UNWISE.EXE. You can specify the new uninstall program below." So I suppose the programs were installed from the companies network. So is there any way to clean up the crapola of files and settings without losing valuable software?

 

[sturm]

You could manually delete the directory under program files for the software you dont want. Then do a regedit, backup first, and delete any reference to that program. There will probably still be files from the removed software in various windows directories left over, but these shouldn't hurt anything.

I am suprised that the company didnt wipe the drive first. The removed data could easily be recovered using the correct software if they didnt do it correct in the first place.

 

[alpine_sc]

Too late.

I installed Ubuntu and erased everything, but I'm glad I did it.