***Note: The original version of this post is located at my official blog, the www.73rd.org***

James asks:

I was given a laptop about 5 years old. It was a work related one. How do I get a clean sweep to remove former OWNER I have of course their pass codes. I can use it but! do not enjoy seeing the other names. Operating system: Windows XP. The year purchased 2003. Thank You!

Help is on the way. If by clean sweep you mean a clean OS without any information of previous owner[s], then you’ll have to format the hard drive. Important thing to remember: when formatting a hard drive, you may will lose everything that is on the drive. It is imperative to back up everything you’ll need later. If you have a CD/DVD recorder and the recording software, you might want to record some vital info [i.e. address book] on that CD/DVD. Also, if you’ll be formatting and installing Windows afterwards, make sure you have the discs for any third party hardware you use since you will need to re-install your programs and drivers after re-installing Windows.

Go to My Computer and select Manage. Computer Management should pop up. Click on Storage on the left side by => Disk Management . On the bottom you should see all your hard drives. Delete any existing partitions on the drive; for that, right click on the partition and select Delete Partition. Make sure you’ve back up everything and click Yes. The partition that will be formatted is called Unallocated with a black bar over it. Right click on it and select New Partition. On the pop up screen select Primary Partition. Make the size equal to the maximum [it should be set this way by default]. On the next screen assign the drive letter you want. On the following screen select the format type: NTFS, FAT or FAT32. I’d choose FAT32, but then again, I choose Ubuntu over Windows…Leave the Allocation unit size as Default. The Volume label is just another name for the drive. Also, I’d check the Perform a quick format box unchecked if I wanted to format the system used with many different users and that has lots of stuff on it. The next screen gives you a summary of the new partition; click Finish, and the computer will format the drive. Once the field under the partition says Healthy and not Formatting, you know it’s done.

All this might not work simply because if you only have one OS on your computer, you wouldn’t be able to format the hard drive from that OS. Formatting means removing all the data. How do you imagine the OS behaving when it’s removing its own components? It’s not possible. In this case, you’d need a boot-disk: either a Windows boot or Linux boot. Again, I insist on getting Ubuntu, since most applications are free, the system is technically more user-friendly. Moreover, Ubuntu is an advanced OS for basically any task [as long as you don’t plan on playing games all day long; for that you’ll need an Xbox]. Also, I’m a big fan of Ubuntu and can help in getting things done. Just another reason to keep reading the 73rd.

Tags: format, hard drive, windows