DELETING ALL INFO IN MY PC

[ulysses]

Hi I am going to give my PC away to a relative but I need to delete all my prsonal stuff, I mean absolute and complete deletion of all personal files, Pls teel me how to do so without affecting the basic win 98 software.

Is there a way to put a password when you burn CD in a CD-R DRIVE?

THANKS

 

[JLSigman]

You want to delete all your personal files? So delete them. There's no trick to it, really. If you want to uninstall all your current programs, go to the Control Panel, click Add and Remove programs, and remove what you want to get rid of.

When you say, "put a password when you burn a CD", do you mean someone would have to type in a password to see the stuff on the CD? Jennifer Sigman
Code-borrower extraordinaire
"They call us public servants for a reason..."

 

[SuperDaveDCF]

It would be nearly impossible for us to tell you how to delete your info. We have no idea what programs you were using. But here's a start.

Go to Windows Explorer and right click on your c: drive and choose Find. In the Named field type....

*.doc to find all documents
*.txt to find all text files (includes cookies)
*.xls to find all Excel spreadsheets
*.jpg to find all JPEG images
*.gif to find all GIF images

You get the picture. There are hundreds of other file extensions depending on the programs you were using.

IMO, if you are that concerned about it, I would just fdisk, format and do a clean Windows install.

 

[crisc]

I noted two excerpts from your question which I think will turn out to be conflicting:

"absolute and complete deletion of all personal files" and "without affecting the basic win 98 software."

If you want to be absolute, you'd probably have to format your drive and reinstall Windows. Even then, it's not impossible, just pretty hard. Windows puts references to your files all over the place, and it's going to be difficult to ensure they can't be recovered without doing some extensive cleaning. I guess the question you have to answer is how technically competent is the person recieving this PC? If it's your 6 year old niece, maybe just manually deleting things and emptying your recycle bin is enough for you...

 

[paulovey]

Hi,

Yeah fdisk it! Delete the partition, create and format a new one, and reinstall windows.

That would pretty much delete everything, the only way top get it back would be by spending a lot of money and sending the disk to a data recovery firm.

How do you want the password to work on the CD-R, are you talking a password to browse the cd, or a password to run the software on it??

Paul


If it isnt broken, please dont try n fix it!!!!!

 

[ulysses]

thanks for responding,
my personal files .doc,jpgs,mpegs,avi,and all related personal info I have downloaded to this computer. I do not want someone getting a program and extracting files i AHVE ERASED SO i NEED TO CLEAN UP COMPLETLY! I just want to leave the WIN 98 and minor programs.

When I transfer files to my cd-r I want to put a password to protect the info I have tranfered to the cd-r is this possible?

thanks

 

[JLSigman]

As they've said above, best way to completely erase is to format the hard drive and reinstall Windows.

As for the CD thing... I believe you can password protect individual files, but not the whole CD. Jennifer Sigman
Code-borrower extraordinaire
"They call us public servants for a reason..."

 

[projspec]

First, save to a floppy or zip any important files, your bookmarks and email addresses.

Find your recovery disk that came with the computer. Stick it in the
cdrom drive and start up the computer.

Choose format and recover That's it, of course you'll have to
reinstall any other programs you have that are not a part
of the recovery disk, such as your printer driver, systemworks, etc.

Run it twice or even three times, if you're really concerned about the contents

Give the computer away.

projspec

 

[SPYDERIX]

Hi,

If you want to password protect your files on CD, first put them into a .zip file then add a password to it, then burn the zip file.

Hope this helps! NATE

design@spyderix-designz.com

http://www.spyderix-designz.com