Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Nadaka]

i dont really have the option of doing a full wipe, dunno if my old expired msdn nliciense for windows z will reinstal
i basically want to make absolutely certain i dont leave any smut, passwords, etc. any good suggestions?

[nenjin]

Is it one you owned and operated? What is Windows Z?

I'd say go in and uninstall every program in Add/Remove Program that isn't essential. Go into user accounts and make a separate account for the kids with its own password (that you create, so you know what it is.) Do not make it an administrator account.

That will likely ensure that a lot of stored passwords and user account information isn't available on their user account.  If you're on XP or older, that's not a guarantee, as Windows 7 stores a lot more data on a user account basis than older versions. Make sure to wipe the cache and cookies and installed web browsers, as that's a primary way websites remember your passwords, auto filling your search history, ect....

You could also revoke a lot of the privileges from their user account (because kids can inadvertently fuck up something by being inquisitive, and possibly mandate a reinstall) but that gets slightly more complicated.

Unfortunately, the contents of the hard drive are NOT stored on a user account basis, so, if bad things are in easy to find places, you'll have to deal with those directly. If they're buried in some nebulous part of the file system that kids are unlikely to find....

Smut is something you'll have to clean out yourself, and you'd probably know where it is. If it's someone else's smut, have fun finding it. I suppose you could use the Windows search bar in the Start menu and search for all .jpg, .gif, .png and .bmp files. That will show you at least where all images are located. The same would need to be done movie files, like .mpg, .avi, ect...

There's literally dozens of other things you could do to make a computer "kid safe" by turning on safe searching in your web browser, ect.... but I'm a little too tired to think through and list all of them at the moment.

[Nadaka]

windows 7 was wahat i tried to type on my phone. and unfortunatly this computer was used by my ex, so i actually wouldnt know where all the wierd stuff is.

[rutsber]

Is this some sort of charity, or do you know who the computer is going to?

[Forums User Meat Wizard]

If you're really that paranoid and can't do a full wipe and OS reinstall, then maybe you shouldn't be giving this computer to children. If they're going to just be doing shit like playing Moshi Monsters and watching Youtube videos then you could always do a Ubuntu install or something.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Can't you just format all or some of the drives?

Also, unless the children getting this are under 10, they might not end up using it for anything more innocent than you do.

[Nadaka]

its going to my niece and nephew. and the primary purpose i am giving it to them is for them to be able to play video games, that i bought them last christmas, only to find out  that the newest computer in their house is over 15 years old. formatting drives would be great! if i was sure my old windows key is valid (it probably isnt) or if i wanted to pirate windows (i dont)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You could, you know, check to see if the key is valid.

[OREOSOME]

If you are going to wipe browser history, leave one bookmark. To here, at bay12 games.

[Forums User Meat Wizard]

If you are going to wipe browser history, leave one bookmark. To here, at bay12 games.

I thought he wanted to get rid of all the smut.

[bombzero]

As far as smut goes...
First search random 3 letter/number combinations(he7, ad3, gf3, etc), this should locate anything downloaded straight from sites that use randomized filenames.
Next try any "obvious" words.
With a bit of searching you should be able to find all of it, even long forgotten stuff in random ass folders.
(Disclaimer: totally not based on personal experience.  )

For passwords and such blank the web caches of any browser you have ever used on that computer, then double check the important sites to see if you're still logged in.

You may want to consider leaving their privileges at administrator, best way to learn about computers is painful manual troubleshooting, right guys?

[Nadaka]

You could, you know, check to see if the key is valid.

how can i do that without installing it over the curently working copy? i only have one spare drive big enough to act as a primary windows 7 partition. and it has the computers current good install on it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I would also say to leave them with administrator access. I remember not having it on my own computer (due to a glitch rather than intentional blocking, but still), and it was annoying as hell since even relatively simple things can be screwed up by it.

You could, you know, check to see if the key is valid.

how can i do that without installing it over the curently working copy? i only have one spare drive big enough to act as a primary windows 7 partition. and it has the computers current good install on it.

Call Microsoft. If anyone can remotely check the viability, they can.

This is of course assuming the key is a remote one rather than a temporary use drive.

[ChairmanPoo]

I discovered ywsterday that trolling HDs for deleted files is very easy. Consider filling and unfilling it a couple of times. There  are programs that do this to the sectors you specify

[ISP]

Buy a new harddrive, and install an OS on it, open the drive you want to destroy up, apply flamable liquid, ignite, this is the only way noone will get your passwords or smut.

If you dont want to use fire, you'll have to format then fill it entirely with something like a giant picture with full colored pixels and resolution at the data size of the drive in some non compression format... trollface, then reformat repeat and install OS, or go for the profesional road and buy some security companies programs that clean hddrives for shady individuals and secure companies.

Cleaning out individual files in piecemeal is near imposible unless you set up partions for storing information beforehand or know what your really doing.