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My father wants to sell his pc. Before he does this he wants to delete personal data.

What is the best way to do this without a windows cd? He has a windows cd but it is scratched and does not work.

w0051977
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2 Answers2

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Best option is to reinstall the operating system, apply windows updates, then run this from the command prompt to erase the free space which may contain retrievable data from the old installation.

cipher /w:C

source for cipher command

Moab
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to 100% guarantee nothing can be retrieved, I'd wipe the drive first. The industry standard for IT policies is to use DBAN boot 'n nuke (http://www.dban.org/) which would wipe everything form the HDD - THEN you can reinstall the OS.

Edit: Make sure you have a disk, or flash drive of your Operating system to reinstall it afterwards. If you don't have the sticker with your product code, there's a guide here: http://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/ for getting it before you nuke the HDD.

Tfom
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