Very non-betta related - need help with computer >.<

[Findlay]

Let me start by saying... I LOVE THIS SITE!! I have it on my homepages, over Facebook ... everyone has been so amazing and I have learned so much!!

My hope is, that I can get some advice from my fellow bettafish.com'ers on a matter regarding my laptop.
I will soon be selling it and upgrading to a new computer.
I need to know how to delete my info/pics/music... whatever, for privacy.
I don't have the Windows7 disk... I'm not sure what to do?
It's a HP...

Uhhmm... yea!
Any advice?

THANKS!!!

[dramaqueen]

I'm sorry I can't help you but I'll bump this up to try and get you some answers.

[HatsuneMiku]

what brand/type/os laptop is it?

sometimes you can contact the manufacturer and ask them for a recovery disk so that you can reformat it ..

the only way to really make sure that your data on that computer is gone is to zerofill it after a reformat .. otherwise savvy hackers can still pull off an image of your data from the hard drive

[jman828]

I am very computer skilled! Just maybe send me a private message so I can help you out!

[ollief9]

Just send it to HP and get them to format your drive for you.

[adamxaotmic]

What all do you want deleted? For pictures, music, docs click on the start bubble, go to computer>>Local Disk (C:)>>Users>>Your name.
In that folder you will find all of your data that's stored in your media folders. Delete the data that's inside the folders. Not the actual folders themselves.

The easiest way to do it is to go to control panel. Make up another account. (name it something like default, or admin.) Make sure that, that account has admin rights. Log into that account and delete your other one. (The one your using.) Then go to computer>>Local Disk (C:)>>Users>>and make sure that all the data folders for your old account are deleted.

Let me know if this helps.

[Micho]

First of all, simply reformatting your laptop won't completely erase everything there are still some risks, people with the right tools can easily retrieve your old data (pictures, music, etc). You basically need to "wipe" the harddrive, now you can do this yourself or hire someone else to do this for you.

Here's a free program that wipes your harddrive: http://www.dban.org/

There are other programs such as cyberCide, KillDisk, etc. But those cause money, fairly inexpensive though.

[adamxaotmic]

Originally Posted by Micho

*snip*

Here's a free program that wipes your harddrive: http://www.dban.org/

There are other programs such as cyberCide, KillDisk, etc. But those cause money, fairly inexpensive though.

+1 For mentioning DBAN. It does take a long time to completely wipe the drive. But it's worth it for security reasons. Your laptop manufacturer should be able to give you a system restore disk at no or little charge. Reinstalling the OS is a pretty painless task. Especially with Windows 7 since it has a lot of the basic drives built in.

[Findlay]

Thanks you guys!!
I haven't messed with it yet... I'm pretty clueless when it comes to stuff like this (obvious, no?)

So - if I used DBAN, the computer will need to have Windows7 reinstalled? I'm not worried about having to do that - I'll let the buyer deal with it!
My last HP crashed (a LOT) and I did the "F11" thing a few times. Pretty much just a recovery with no backup disks (bad me, bad!).... do ya think that would work to get it back to factory-ish-ness?
I just don't my info or any 'footprints' left on the computer... geez sorry if I'm making this more complicated than it should be lol
I'll start with the control panel thing and go from there for now

[jman828]

yes, that would be fine :)