Need COMPUTER SERVICES LOCALLY

[626Tony]

I live in the pasadena area and ahave a dell laptop I want to reset to original because I want to sell it. I am offering some $ for technical assistance face to face can be at starbucks or wherever will even trade for some AMMO LOL i know how to use a computer but tech stuff is not 4 me thanks !!

[trujilr2]

pm sent

[Lyte-]

Your dell came with a factory "install"/ "Image" disk.

All you really need to do is back up your personal data and install that disk.

It will put it back to the factory OEM state.

[Justin3]

You can even do it without the factory disk. If you just want to wipe it back to original, just use the system restore and instead of restoring it to a prior date, you have the option of restoring it to factory.

I've done it to a lot of computers. I usually back my stuff up and do it to a computer every 3 years.

[Fig]

Be very careful if just "restoring" this back to a previous state, or just reinstalling windows back on top. If you have any sensitive info on your harddrive you will want to wipe this drive, and I mean not just a quick wipe, something DOD style, where there are about 20+ passes of writing 0's and random data. There are free utilites. LIke this one:

http://www.dban.org/

You could also go with a live linux cd and a command like:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

It won't be a fast process either, the larger the hard drive, the longer the write time. I wouldn't want to sit at Starbucks that long that's for sure.

Whatever you do, don't sell a computer to someone with sensitive info on it. You would be surprised what you could dig up on hard drives with some simple tools.

[GameAPBT]

Be very careful if just "restoring" this back to a previous state, or just reinstalling windows back on top. If you have any sensitive info on your harddrive you will want to wipe this drive, and I mean not just a quick wipe, something DOD style, where there are about 20+ passes of writing 0's and random data. There are free utilites. LIke this one:

http://www.dban.org/

You could also go with a live linux cd and a command like:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

It won't be a fast process either, the larger the hard drive, the longer the write time. I wouldn't want to sit at Starbucks that long that's for sure.

Whatever you do, don't sell a computer to someone with sensitive info on it. You would be surprised what you could dig up on hard drives with some simple tools.

+1

Dban it, then pop your Factory CD in, press f12 on boot up, select boot from CD/DVD, then walk through the menus. You'll be good to go.

[kemasa]

It is best to wipe it with DBAN as it ensures that it is really wiped. Due to the encoding of the data, other means don't always wipe out everything. In part, it depends on how paranoid you are, but since DBAN is free and easy to use, it is best to just use it first.