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Bill	completely removing all programs and data from old laptop? I have an old Toshiba Satellite 4000CDS. I want to completely clean the hard drive of all programs and data. I'm unable to uninstall windows Win 98 and Office 98 I do not have the disks. Please Help Bill 3 answer(s)
	Best Answer: Removing all the programs and all the apparent files is not enough to remove all the data from your laptop, as Windows keeps back-up files to regenerate your file in case of accidental removal. A more reasonable way to erase all data is to format your hard-drive, but then the next user will need to reinstall it (and will need for that the windows or linux CDs). That might repell some, but many people buy such laptops on EBay to reinstall them anyway, not trusting the software installed by the previous owner. There is a windows command to format your hard-drive, in the manager of hard drives. If Windows refuse to erase itself, there are also several freeware applications available online (see the link). Please note that even a format of the hard-drive is not totally safe as there are some specialized tools to recover data even after a format. The banks and other high security agency physically destroy their hard-drives (hammer and fire, not kidding!) to be sure that the data is never accessed again, but I doubt that you need this kind of measure. View more answers to this question.
More Answers dndrez5 To totally remove, you have to go through, add/remove programs Vi Wickam If you want to completely clear the hard drive, including operating system, you can: Restart the computer While it is booting press F8 and select safe mode command prompt At the DOS prompt type format c: and hit enter Type Y to confirm and hit enter. ***This will wipe everything off the drive completely. There will be nothing left on it after formatting. If you don't have the disks that came with the computer, you do not have an operating system to reload. If you have any important data on this computer, back it up first! Thanks, Vi Wickam On-Site Computer Solutions http://www.424help.com Evans ville Business Computer Repair lejyby Removing all the programs and all the apparent files is not enough to remove all the data from your laptop, as Windows keeps back-up files to regenerate your file in case of accidental removal. A more reasonable way to erase all data is to format your hard-drive, but then the next user will need to reinstall it (and will need for that the windows or linux CDs). That might repell some, but many people buy such laptops on EBay to reinstall them anyway, not trusting the software installed by the previous owner. There is a windows command to format your hard-drive, in the manager of hard drives. If Windows refuse to erase itself, there are also several freeware applications available online (see the link). Please note that even a format of the hard-drive is not totally safe as there are some specialized tools to recover data even after a format. The banks and other high security agency physically destroy their hard-drives (hammer and fire, not kidding!) to be sure that the data is never accessed again, but I doubt that you need this kind of measure. http://www.killdisk.com/