Re: Advice Needed - Giving Away Computers

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On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:50:20 -0400, Lynn Q <manxcatq@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi there,

I have two old computers which are working perfectly well which I am giving
away. As I don't have the time to reformat the drives I wonder what else I
can do to ensure that any of my information is not accessible on these
systems. Both systems have Windows XP on them, one is XP Pro which was
upgraded from Windows ME. This is a 10 year old system, has had upgrades
along the way, but works fine for internet and so on. The other system is
also Windows XP, but Home. Again, this is a 2-drive system, fully
functioning, with 1 GB RAM, upgraded a few times. Both have XP SP2
installed.

So... What can I check and modify to ensure my information is unavailable to
the recipients? So far I have removed e-mail accounts that were set up.

Any advice on what to check... And how... Would be most welcome. Guidance
on how to clean up these machines without reformatting again would be much
appreciated.

By the way I will be giving the original installation disks away with the
systems. Will that cause any issues?

Thank you so much!

Lynn
It usually often isn't worth while to give away a computer.

For example, I just bought a used computer that was identical to my
5+ 2.4GHz computer except for having a 40GB disk instead of a 200GB
disk that my computer originally had.

The original computer cost more than US$3000, the replacement less
than US$190.

I suggest physically destroying the hard disk so as to not have
to worry about a revectored sector (i.e., an originally good
disk sector that went bad) containing data that you don't want
someone else to get.

You can then keep whatever parts you might want for spare parts,
and throw out the rest.
.

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