Cleanup traces of all activity on laptop

C

crazycool2k

Geek Trainee
Hi,
I have a laptop that was given to me by my office, i have in the past 2-3 years downloaded lot of softwares, music, movies onto this laptop. I have installed lot of software, gone to many websites etc etc.

I now have to return back this laptop to my office as they are giving me a new one. Before i handover the laptop back to the office i need to clean my laptop completely of all traces of my activities. They should not be able to knwo what sites i went to, what softwares i installed, what files i downloaded. I want to handover the laptop back to them wihtout any traces of my activites.

Please advice how do i do this?
 
tuxified said:
Screw it Up !
Click to expand...
Not really in the spirit of this site mate....

You'd be best to secure wipe the hard drive and re-install the Operating system from scratch (most laptops have a built -in hard drive recovery partition nowadays meaning no stress over drivers etc.)
 
I must agree, the best way is to do a recovery or a fresh install..that way they get it back the same way you got it..
 
Personally, I would not even bother to re-install.
Your firm is likely to return the laptop to the supplier under its service agreement (hardware intact, the rest is not important, in most cases) and if not, they will wipe the HDD anyway before installing a new image.

I am with Sniper. Boot and Nuke. The most thorough option will take (for a 40gb hdd) about two hours (if I remember rightly) or so and there will be not a shred left on the drive.
 
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