will sell laptop how to format computer?

K

ketanco

Member
hello i bought a new laptop and want to sell the old one. How can I format my old laptop? it has windows vista. i dont have formatting cd. i lost it. but in its one drive it says it is a recovery drive. with two visible files in it. one is autorun.inf and the other is recovery.exe

when i clicked on both it only had information. it says do not alter contents of this drive or recovery later might not be possible. it is fine but i didnt see anything about how to run anything there. and it looks like it has a 4.5 GB of files in it where are they or why i can not see i dont know

anyway am i going to use that drive to reformat my conputer?

i want to format it because i will sell it and i dont want anybody to be digging through my personal info later, although i deleted them and emptied the recycleing bin, still i heard that it is possible so the safest way is to formayt your coputer before selling right? or what is my other option?
 
killdisk works well. have a pay and free. ive used the free a few times. Its one military pass. the pay is several algorithms. think the free will work fine. your choice.
 
ketanco said:
hello i bought a new laptop and want to sell the old one. How can I format my old laptop? it has windows vista. i dont have formatting cd. i lost it. but in its one drive it says it is a recovery drive. with two visible files in it. one is autorun.inf and the other is recovery.exe

when i clicked on both it only had information. it says do not alter contents of this drive or recovery later might not be possible. it is fine but i didnt see anything about how to run anything there. and it looks like it has a 4.5 GB of files in it where are they or why i can not see i dont know

anyway am i going to use that drive to reformat my conputer?

i want to format it because i will sell it and i dont want anybody to be digging through my personal info later, although i deleted them and emptied the recycleing bin, still i heard that it is possible so the safest way is to formayt your coputer before selling right? or what is my other option?
Click to expand...
I would think that you could click on teh Recovery.exe and start the recovery that way. If not, look at the manufacturers site to see if they have a recovery module that you can use to burn the files either to a disk (most common), or flash key (acer and HP i know have these), then just boot to the disk.
 
Typically the way to use the recovery partition is by hitting the correct key when you first see the splash screen when you turn the computer on. It's typically an F# key and it often says what key to hit on the screen. Sometimes not though, but it's easy enough to look up.
 
If you can't figure out how to use the Laptops System Recovery option then install ccleaner. It has a option for Secure Deletion of files. Stuff can be over written anywhere from 3 to 35 times depending on how you set it.

If the Laptop runs good, then uninstall the junk software that may not be needed, plus software that is out of date like Tax software, AV software, 3rd party games, Printer Software. Delete Email accounts, and all your Personal Data from My Documents. Reset the Page File to clear it out. Then do PC maintenance like defrag and disk Cleanup, and Delete all the old System Restore points,. With ccleaner set for secure file deletion the stuff won't be recoverable.

Just did this on a computer and it only took about 20 minutes, and after the cleaning the computer went from taking 3 minutes to boot to about 30 seconds. So all the junk software I uninstalled really helped the computer out.

After that I ran a online Virus scan, Panda active Scan to see if anything else needed done related to Malware.

One last thing, create new User account with generic name Like "Owner" Boot into the new account, and Delete your Old User Account.
 
Last edited:
ok i checked these and ccleaner seems like the most popular one by far based on alexa ranking.... now when i download and install ccleaner, and it deletes everything, is that it? i mean as far as my old keyboard typings such as passowrds, usernames, personal info etc... is cleaning all the drives evrything or because i didnt format the disk and new user is still using my old windows copy does it mean she or he can look into something still?
 
The last step of Creating a new User account, and deleting your old User account will get rid of old Browser settings.

If extremely paranoid just destroy the Laptop Hard Drive, and sell it without a Drive.
 
Usually when a machine is running Vista or 7 and has a recovery partition, you press F6 before boot and choose "Repair Your Computer". Go through the options to get to the main screen and the bottom one should involve recovering the computer with a factory image. Then simply follow the prompts to restore the computer back to factory defaults.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top