How to clean computer before leaving?

[cbx]

I have a good friend who is moving out of state,. and is leaving his
office computer behind in this office, and wants to clear out all
the histories, cookies and any other traces of where he has been
and what he has been visiting or whatever. I seem to remember
something about History/MRU cleaner? Is that built-in?

Anyway, can you advise what we can do to clean out these
"tracks" for him? I'm not too creative with Google so any help
would be appreciated. He's running XP Pro.

(He's a lawyer, so guess he's being extra cautious.... he he..)

Thanks

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I have a good friend who is moving out of state,. and is leaving his
office computer behind in this office, and wants to clear out all
the histories, cookies and any other traces of where he has been
and what he has been visiting or whatever. I seem to remember
something about History/MRU cleaner? Is that built-in?

Anyway, can you advise what we can do to clean out these
"tracks" for him? I'm not too creative with Google so any help
would be appreciated. He's running XP Pro.

(He's a lawyer, so guess he's being extra cautious.... he he..)

Thanks

To protect his personal information and data from any future users
of average skills, he should, at the very least, format the hard drive.
He can do this using the original Installation CD. Simply boot from
the WinXP installation CD. He'll be offered the opportunity to delete,
create, and format partitions as part of the installation process. (He
may need to re-arrange the order of boot devices in the PC's BIOS to
boot from the CD.)

If he wishes to do a more thorough job of protecting his personal
data, WipeDrive
(http://www.whitecanyon.com/wipedrive-erase-hard-drive.php) meets U.S.
DoD standards for securely cleaning surplus unclassified hard drives,
and could be used before formatting and reinstalling the OS and
applications.



--

Bruce Chambers

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killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[Nih]

If you are looking for a free drive wiping program do a google search for
Dban.

 

[Anthony Buckland]

If you are looking for a free drive wiping program do a google search for
Dban.

A quick and dirty solution, considering how little
hard drives cost, would be to yank the drive, choose
between taking it with him (could be valuable stuff
in there) or destroying it (incineration, or drill some holes
right through it like recyclers do), and leave the
successor to do a clean install of the OS or from
the original recovery media on a new drive.

Also to consider: all his own backup media, and in
particular any the partnership may have used to back
up all the office machines. Some of the latter could be
in other physical locations or even online.