How Do I Rebuild My Work Laptop For Personal Use 1

[discomonkfish]

I have bought my laptop from my employer, I no longer work for them and want to wipe it off all its security settings, passwords etc and rebuild it. I take it all I do is format the disk and then reinstall the operating system of my choice?

 

[Krosus]

You have to be careful if you want to wipe the system that whatever o/system your going to replace it with has drivers for all the hardware inside the laptop. For expample i replaced my old win98 laptop with sp4 win2k and it had an old lt winmoden which had no 2k driver i had to spend ages tracking down manufacturer to find a compatible version of the drivers.

 

[discomonkfish]

Thanks....I was thinking maybe it would be better to get rid of all the restrictions on it somehow rather than rebuild it...I suppose the only way to do that is to contact my old boss and get further info on that from him...unless you know any tricks to get round it?

 

[MakeItSo]

If you know the admin password:

Right click on "My Computer" - properties
Choose the network identification tab.
If you still belong to a domain, join a Workgroup instead.
Restart
open your control panel and adjust the local security policy (shared folders, access right a.s.o)

That should suffice.

MakeItSo

Andreas Galambos
EDP / Technical Support Specialist
Bowne Global Solutions Wuppertal, Germany
(andreas.galambos@bowneglobal.de)
HP:

http://home.arcor.de/andygalambos

 

[discomonkfish]

Cheers, what I would really like to do is change the registered name and the name of my laptop. Where is this done and will anything be affected? Thanks for your help so far ;-)

 

[MakeItSo]

That is set in the "network identification", from the properties of "My Computer".

Choose "rename", give your laptop a name you wish and join a workgroup (e.g. "Workgroup&quot.

This will assign the laptop its name and will enable you to remove domain admins from your administrators list.

Make sure to add yourself to the administrators' list, else you might not be able to run certain prgrams, install or deinstall...

MakeItSo

Andreas Galambos
EDP / Technical Support Specialist
Bowne Global Solutions Wuppertal, Germany
(andreas.galambos@bowneglobal.de)
HP:

http://home.arcor.de/andygalambos

 

[Ger2111]

Do you want to completely rebuild the Laptop, will you have access to the net during the rebuild?
What OS do you want to put on the machine.
What is the name and model number of the laptop.
Do you have all required software if you are going to rebuild ie MS Office etc.
What size is the HDD
How much memory does the system have.


Answer these few questions and I will let you know the best way to proceed.


MCP

 

[bcastner]

You can change Windows' registered user and company info from System Registry. Open the Registry Editor by selecting Start, Run, typing regedit, and clicking OK. Navigate to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

You'll see the RegisteredOrganization and RegisteredOwner string values (or AB icons) in the right pane. To change one of these values, double click it to open its Edit String dialog, type in the new information, and press OK. Repeat for the other entry if necessary, and close RegEdit. Note: This changes the default registered user info. Any program registration, dial-up connection, or logon you've already created with the previous name will stay in effect.

 

[discomonkfish]

Thanks BCastner...just what I was after...have done it...will post if any problems....