eraser feature question...

B

blueskychx

New Member
I want to sell my laptop on ebay with the windows xp and office pro on it .... however I want to make sure any and all personal info is GONE. Is Eraser the program that will help me do this. I looked at DBAN but got the impression it would wipe out everything.

Any advise would be appreciated. thanks. PJ
 
The best way of proceeding is to use whatever arrangement your laptop has (restore disk, restore partition/utility or whatever) to restore it to factory condition; in the course of this, the system will be formatted. Then, before reinstalling Office, install Eraser and run a free space erase on the drive.

If, as with many laptops, there is a separate data partition (Drive D: or whatever), quick format this if you need to, then run a free space erase on that drive also.

If you can't find your Office install disk/licence number, sell the laptop without Office. It is virtually impossible to guarantee that you have removed all private data from a drive sufficiently well to let it out of your hands without both formatting it and erasing free space. This is not an Eraser issue; it's because files and copies of files will exist in all sorts of places you don't know about (pretty much however expert you are).

David
 
So if I put back to factory, will the service packs need to be all re-installed and windows from disk etc? What about drivers etc.

I just have to start over and deal with all the potential cans of worms. Looking for the best shortcut without spending the next week jacking with it.

Also, the Office Pro will definitely increase value; so I would like to include... I do have cd and license code... so I guess I will have to re-install.
 
blueskychx said:
So if I put back to factory, will the service packs need to be all re-installed and windows from disk etc? What about drivers etc.
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It will be in whatever state the machine was in when new. Any missing Service Packs I'd leave for the new owner to deal with; the machine would have to be pretty old to have come with anything less than SP2. You could do a Windows Update if you are feeling kind (which would perhaps flag up the latest Service Pack); personally, I wouldn't. There will be a full set of drivers in the reinstallation, and I'd stick with those.

blueskychx said:
I just have to start over and deal with all the potential cans of worms. Looking for the best shortcut without spending the next week jacking with it.
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Hence my recommendations above.

blueskychx said:
Also, the Office Pro will definitely increase value; so I would like to include... I do have cd and license code... so I guess I will have to re-install.
Click to expand...
As this is a public forum, I have to point out that under those circumstances, you'd have to sell the install disk with the machine, and cease using that licence yourself. Unless it is a multi-user licence of course, in which case you will have the joyous task of checking the licence to make sure that what you are doing is legal.

David
 
thanks for all the info. I have already bought newwindow 7 laptop with office pro ... so old licence should be good to go.
 
Glad to help. And that you don't have a Microsoft licensing tangle to deal with.

David
 
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