Order of the Bath

There comes a time in the life of every PC when it needs to move on, either to another user or, as far as you are concerned, to scrap. We have all heard the stories of personal data being extracted from disks sold on eBay or from salvage exported to Africa so how do we avoid that happening.

The obvious way, of course, is to remove the disk and smash it, but this is very wasteful of resources which may still have a useful life ahead. What we need is a way to erase the data for good but keep the equipment in a working state. The next stage down is to wipe the entire disk clean. This requires a standalone utility on a CDROM or Floppy disk to write random data repeatedly to every sector of the disk. The recommended program will do this but even this is over the top for most people. Not very helpful for the nephew to get a PC with no operating system. So what is a practical way? As I have been asked a couple of times recently to help I have devised the following straight forward method.

I recommend using a tool called Eraser from Heidi, it is free and not complicated, but before doing so you need to make sure that you have located all files that could contain sensitive information. This is what the following process tries to do.

It is for Windows XP only and assumes that it is still working reasonably well. It is not guaranteed but will make it a lot less likely that any useful private information could be found afterwards. For other systems I would suggest one of the other methods above. You need to follow the instructions in this order to avoid missing anything; there are a lot of steps, all are important but none are difficult.

1. Transfer all the data off that you need later. This is definitely a one way process, there is no going back if you forget something. A good way to do it if you have the capability, is to write everything you want to keep onto CD-R disks. This also gives you a permanent backup of the transition should anything go wrong with your new one in the first few months.
2. Uninstall as much software as possible, particularly licensed software that is NOT going to the new home. Most modern software doesn’t store data centrally but it is safer this way. Licensed software is generally for one machine only so if you are going to use it on your new machine, it must be taken off this one. Use the Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs to do this.
3. Using the Control Panel, User Accounts program, create a brand new user account with administrator authority and no password—lets call it Admin.
4. Download and install the Eraser program. Don’t run it or reboot yet.
5. Right click “My Computer” and select Properties. On the System Restore tab, turn off System Restore on all drives. While you are there you could go to the Computer Name tab and remove your name from the description. Reboot when it asks you …
6. … disconnect from the internet (remove the cable) and after the reboot, log in to the new Admin account you just created.
7. Using the Control Panel, User Accounts program again, delete ALL the other accounts except Guest. When it asks, select to delete all their data as well. This will conveniently wipe out all data files in their “My Documents” folders but also other stuff that is hard to get at such as the browser cache, saved passwords, email account information, temporary work files etc.
8. Check the “Shared” Documents” folder and delete anything you find in there.
9. Using the Control Panel, Network Connections, delete any internet accounts contained there.
10. Now go round looking for other scraps of user data and delete them. The C: drive root should only have “System” stuff on it. Anything other than “WINDOWS”, “Program Files” and “Documents and Settings” and a few ini such like files should be viewed with suspicion; empty the Temp folder. I can’t be very specific about this because some branded systems have other files and folders here and they are all different but especially delete any files you have created here.
11. Close any applications running; there shouldn’t be many left anyway, but close the explorer and browser windows etc.
12. Empty the Recycle Bin.
13. Now you should have a system that looks much like the day it was delivered to you. It may even be tidier. You will probably find that it is running a lot quicker as well; did you really need a new one?
14. If you are still with me then now is the time to run Eraser. Select Edit, Preferences, Erasing and on the Unused Disk Space tab, raise the level to option 3; 3 times erase. Unless you have military secrets on there (in which case, consult someone else) this will be quite sufficient. Now create a new task with File, New Task to erase all the local disks, set it running with Task, Run and stand back—for a few hours. Ignore the warning messages about full disks, these are transient.
15. At the end you will get a long list of errors about Cluster tips. They are parts that could not be erased but I wouldn’t worry about them.
16. Reset the System Restore that was taken off at the start and reboot.

That is now done; a washed, waxed and polished PC ready for a new user. For software that is moving on, such as Windows itself, remember to give them all the original disks, manuals and licence certificates that go with it.

Have I missed anything? Please let me know. Important new things discovered will be added below.

• Re-installing Windows from scratch onto a freshly created and formatted partition is an even better method but it is very time consuming and beyond many people. Heidi’s Eraser provides an option to do this. There is nothing in my list that the average users can’t do which is why I suggest it.
• Swap space—is this a serious threat? This is the space that Windows uses to store programs when they are not required in memory and can, potentially, get sensitive information, though it is frequently overwritten. If you are worried about this, turn off virtual memory. In My Computer right click Properties, Advanced tab, Performance Settings, Advanced tab, Virtual Memory, Change, set No Paging File before the reboot. Restore the value at the end of the process to make the system usable again.
• Added (thanks to Mike)—If you have a recovery disk or partition as some branded PCs do then you can use this instead of step 2. Depending on how much this restores the PC to factory conditions it may be possible to omit some of the other steps as well but it can do no harm to check.

This entry was posted on 12 Feb 2007 at 22:16 by Rick and is filed under Technical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.