HOW TO CLEAR OLD PC OF ALL INFO?

[tomtomg59]

Hello, Everyone: I am thinking about giving my brother my old pc, its a windows98SE! I have 2 disks that came with it! One is a Recovery disk and the other is a Driver and Utiltiy disk! I don't know anything about using these disks! I want to clear everything i can off the computer including my registration name (if possible) Can anyone tell me in sorta (very slow) and walk through manner how to do all this, because i am on the stupid side and bordering on Moron,Thank You Tom

[hiredgoonz]

There should be instructions with the PC, but basically, put the restore disk in the system and reboot. It should boot to the cd and walk you through the reformat reinstall process...

Once it has installed Windows, you will need the driver disk. It may even walk you through that, but in case it doesn't:

Right click on My Computer, go to Properties and then Device Manager. Anything that has a yellow exclamation point next to it probably just needs drivers. Right click, select the option to install or update drivers, and point it to the CD...

Any problems post back...

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When all else fails, read the instructions.

Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;rid;kbinfo)

Drivers (http://www.driverguide.com)

Google (http://www.google.com)

[This message has been edited by hiredgoonz (edited 03-23-2002).]

[Rick]

Check the restore CD against your installed software and hardware
You may find that it doesn’t format the drive.
Toshiba is one that doesn’t
it simply reinstalls the software and doesn’t remove any thing from the drive.

To be safe.
Use the install remove software panel and the Create boot floppy
to Make a bootable floppy with cd-rom support

Then foot off the cd as explained above to see IF in fast the system supports it.
If you can boot from the cd.
Shut the system down.
Then boot from the floppy you made
Run Fdisk and remove the partitions on the hard drive or drives

shut the system down again.
Now boot from the cd and allow it to fdisk and format the drive
then it should install the software to it’s original state and ALL old info will be unretrievable.


If you are Not able to boot from the cd-rom drive / recovery disk .
You should have a recovery floppy that was included with the system.

[tomtomg59]

Thank You Guys, I wont be doing this for a week (going away) but can use and will print out all advice. I do have a startup disk that i made a couple of months ago and the recovery disk that came with it! My main concern was getting my name off the registration and deleting out certain programs and all passwords! I guess i dont have to reformat everything? Tom