Cleaning a 10-year old WinXP machine

R

RogerK

New Member
I have two machines running Windows XP Home Edition version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 1.
They have no Internet access.
I want to clean the discs sufficiently to be able to give the machines away safely.
'Eraser' calls for Service Pack 3 on WinXP. Is there any way of doing the same job for SP1?
Thanks,
RogerK
 
For this job I would either try DBAN (see the companion forum here or the DBAN forum on SourceForge), or use Eraser 5.88, which is available from the Eraser downloads page on SourceForge, and has a portable version. I am afraid that you will have to get a friend to download one of these for you, and then transfer it to the old machines.

Please note that it is quite difficult to securely clean a system drive, and leave Windows in place. This issue is discussed in (for example) this thread.

David
 
Thanks, David, that is exactly what I needed.
I have now downloaded V5.88, and am currently running it on the first machine from the memory stick I used for transfer.
Everything seems to be in train and working, so you have almost certainly solved my problem for me.
Many thanks again.
RogerK
 
rofan said:
Still use winxp sp 1? Is it security?
Click to expand...
I think that it is well documented that probably the majority of machines never get a Service Pack update (much less and OS upgrade) during their working lives. Anyone on a slow (or no) internet connection would certainly be unlikely to bother with a Service Pack.

David
 
I had the same problem last week. I needed to clean some machines at my workplace before they being donated to some elementary rural area school. The machines used to hold sensitive data on them like employees accounts and credit card details. I have asked the same thing in forum and I received the explanation that, you can erase just the free space on the hard drive and leave the operating system in place but you can't be 100% sure that ALL data is destroyed - some things cold still remain in the OS. It's a very small chance, but still it's there.

For 100% erasing use DBAN and boot from DBAN CD, than re-install the operating systems and donate the machines. I did a test on my computer, I had some files, deleted them with the delete command in windows and after that I run a recovery software to scan for files. Of course i found them and recovered them with just few clicks. Later I did the same, but after normally deleting i have erased the free space on the drive with one pass (simplest method). I run recovery again and I could recover no files - so it was pretty secure for me.

Now depends how paranoid you are and what kind of data did those machines contained. If they didn't contain some state secrets than you can erase just the free space and leave the operating system as it is because it takes much longer to completely erase the hard drive than re-install the OS.
 
s7r said:
I received the explanation that, you can erase just the free space on the hard drive and leave the operating system in place but you can't be 100% sure that ALL data is destroyed - some things cold still remain in the OS. It's a very small chance, but still it's there.
Click to expand...
To be (I believe) absolutely correct, what may remain is not in the OS as such (except possibly for the cluster tips of inaccessible OS files, though that is unlikely to be a major issue), but
  • logs, caches and other clutter created by applications and by Windows itself, and stored in locations where only knowledgeable and determined users can find them;
  • restore points, especially if shadow copies are enabled (which they are by default);
  • the page file, which can only be emptied on exit from Windows, which requires a registry setting change and significantly slows the shut down process;
  • user backups, which the user forgot about (I've done that too);
  • the list goes on ...

DBAN is the best solution for clearing a whole system, when it works. The trouble is that it hasn't been supported for several years, and just does not have drivers for some hardware. Also, creating a boot disk from an ISO image and changing BIOS settings to allow booting from the optical drive or floppy is simple stuff for some people and way outside the comfort zone for others. A good alternative for non system drives is to quick format the drive and use Eraser to erase free space. That will only work for a system drive if you remove it from the machine and attach it as a non-system drive to another machine running Eraser. But, if you do that, you can reinstall Windows with a fair certainty that nothing remains of the data previously stored on the drive.

David
 
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