Got a Toshiba Tecra 8000. PII366, 10gig, 64mb, CD. Want to erase all prior logons, passwords, basically all known existence that this was ever used by anyone else except me.
Any advice/tips? Thanks.
Boot from a DOS/Windows floppy, make sure your CD-ROM drive still works (you will need DOS CD-ROM drivers and mscdex.exe loaded from config.sys and autoexec.bat - ask if you don't know how to do this).
Then fdisk, reformat, and reinstall everything.
That's the only way to make it "yours" and be legal with the software.
Otherwise, you have lots of registry editing to do, and even then you probably can't get EVERY trace of prior owners.
Completely cleaning a machine is a very difficult thing to do unless you are very experienced, and in my (somewhat informed) opinion, the only way to truly clean up a machine is to reinstall the OS. Even if you uninstalled all of the old software and deleted any files created by the previous user, there would still be a lot of orphaned registry entries. And unless you feel comfortable hacking the registry and deleting keys, they'll probably stay there.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.