Clearing out WinXP Pro to make laptop ready for sale

PaulBoy

PaulBoy

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What's the best way to do this? - I plan to sell my Dell laptop probably on £bay - I don't want to spend further money on it & was going to sell for repair / spares - It has a reasonable 80gb hard drive & 2gb ram but the AC power socket in the back has failed and it is nearly 4yrs old
It has WinXP Pro installed & although it didn't ship with the OS on CD I think I created my own copy from the hard drive (?) - I wanted to know how best to prepare it for sale i.e. get all my files off - Should I delete them & then reinstall WinXP or wont I be able to do that without an original WinXP CD?
Another complication is the internal dvd drive only works intermitently - I have an external drive which connects on USB - Will I be able to boot from that? (If yes I need to change the start up order in the CMOS don't I?)
Any help greatfully received
Paul
 
if selling for spares and repair i wouldnt worry too much bout an operating system myself. whoever buys it most likely will reinstall anyway
 
if it's going for spares i'd just format it and list it with the licence but no software
 
or take out the hard drive and use it in a caddy for yourself and then sell the rest for spares and repairs
 
I too agree, a good friend had probs with a laptop he sold on fleybay. He did wipe it but they must have used 'Rescue Pro' or similar and recovered his daughters and her friends email/bebo/phone details from it. They got the person involved and she was charged, yes it was a woman!
 
sorry - thanks to those who have replied :thumbs: - a few more questions on those replies ...



or take out the hard drive and use it in a caddy for yourself and then sell the rest for spares and repairs
Click to expand...

- if i do this how do you hook it up to the new laptop?



formating WILL NOT erase your personal information
Click to expand...

- scary! - surely there must be some way to erase the old data for good?



if selling for spares and repair i wouldnt worry too much bout an operating system myself. whoever buys it most likely will reinstall anyway
Click to expand...


- would it not go for more money if there is a legit copy of winxp pro installed?


cheers ... paul
 
you should have a section on the bottom of your laptop that you can unscrew and then your hard drive will be in a caddy, it'll probably be parallel ata so you just google for 2.5" parallel ata hard drive caddy and put it in there.

there are apps that write nonsense data to your hard drive to overwrite your original data but to do a decent wipe takes a long time so it's hardly worth it unless you're intent on selling it
 
first install CC cleaner.. this can overwrite data with 1s and zeros... let it do a full clean on the machine then logon as the local administrator.... delete your user profiles and run cc cleaner again. that will completely eliminate your user profile folder. then simply delete the user account and create a new on called "user" which you can give to the new owner. Of course you will have copied any data you want off it first right?
 
we11ingon said:
first install CC cleaner.. this can overwrite data with 1s and zeros... let it do a full clean on the machine then logon as the local administrator.... delete your user profiles and run cc cleaner again. that will completely eliminate your user profile folder. then simply delete the user account and create a new on called "user" which you can give to the new owner. Of course you will have copied any data you want off it first right?
Click to expand...

much obliged & yes I have backed up (twice!)
regards
paul
 
Which model is it and what are you looking to get for it? I used to repair laptops so a broken power socket is a 30 minute annoyance. I could do with an old laptop for a project.
 
cowasaki said:
Which model is it and what are you looking to get for it? I used to repair laptops so a broken power socket is a 30 minute annoyance. I could do with an old laptop for a project.
Click to expand...
Hi - its a Dell Inspiron 6000 - I'd need to see what they go for on £bay to work out a price - When I thought it was just a battery or power lead issue a few weeks ago I replaced both of those with genuine Dell ones so I'd like to get some of my outlay back on on those plus whatever the rest is worth - The screen is in perfect condition / the DVD drive works when it feels like it & I have the original 1gb (2x 512 sticks) RAM & hdd (30 or 40gb) if I can find them (?) - I have the Dell discs & when I bought the machine burned my own copy of XP onto CD (as it didnt ship with XP on CD just hdd)
Drop me a pm if you're interested ... Paul
 
Hi

Recently I bought a laptop off ebay. I went to see two. The first one still had hard core, home pornography in the recycle bin, the second, the one I bought had a third hard drive partition the chap had obviously forgotten about which had his clients email addresses and web ftb details, complete with password. This chap claimed to be a web site designer

stew
 
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