Advice on re-installing Windows XP!

[Will]

Having a bit of a clear out and decided that it would be a good idea to part (ebay!) with my old (now redundant) laptop, a Samsung V20 (P4 1.8, 512MB RAM, 20GB HD, CDRW/DVD etc).

When I originally bought it, (brand new from a reputable supplier) it came pre-installed with Windows XP Home.

Windows has run virtually faultlessly since I have had it, with the result being that I have not had to reinstall the operating system since day 1! (Unusual and nice result!)

Anyway, as I am due to sell it, and the fact that it contains a load of the usual rubbish, plus some personal information, I would like to format the hard drive and re-install Windows from scratch.

So, I look through all of the usual rubbish that it came with, and found a few application CDs (Nero, Power DVD, drivers etc) but no Windows XP CDs. My new Toshiba laptop has 2 "Recovery" CDs that contain the Windows XP Home installation files, but they are "locked" to work only on the correct Toshiba machine.

My question is, what is my best option for removing data from my system. If it came to it, for peace of mind, I would rather sell the computer with no OS installed, but it does seem a bit stupid as it came with Windows XP already installed, and has a license/product key attached to the machine re-iterating its entitlement to be running the correct OS!

It does seem rather silly to not be supplied with a proper installation/recovery disk (as my new laptop does!), but as this was nearly 2 years ago, I don't think it is even worth asking if it should have!

Would it be possible to install Windows XP from another copy of the same version (perhaps a non brand specific version?), and re-entrer the product key from my machine?

Failing this, anybody else got any other suggestions?

Thanks in Advance,

Cheers,

Will

 

[peterchurch]

Hi,
I would recommend that you remove the disk and buy a new one to sell with the laptop or just sell the laptop without a disk. There are numerous tools available to undelete information and even formating the disk will not make the data underneath safe. you can buy a laptop drive for about the same cost as a safe format program now anyway

Cheers

Peter

 

[Spinal]

Hmmm, that is an expensive option. Yes, a "generic" version of windows xp will work with youir product key (as long as it is legit); which means if you format and reinstall windows from a third source, it should work with ur key. THis said, formatting doesn't delete the data, just the indexing to the data, so its easily recoverable. THere are several programs out there to aid in data destruction (shredder comes to mind)
Spinal

 

[Steve_Perry]

Do you have a hidden partition on the HDD that contains the full XP install disc set??

My Packard Bell did... on my desktop there was an icon to 'create master disc set' that essentially transferred the hidden partition and created a set of master install XP discs and then wiped the hidden partition thus leaving me with a free 2GB FAT32 Partition labelled as D: drive as well as my 35GB NTFS main partition, C:. In fact only tonight I converted my FAT32 D: drive to an NTFS file system.

You could look in you management console and check exactly how your HDD is carved up. You never know, you may find a hidden section with the XP install that you are looking for.

I find it hard to believe that a laptop has been supplied with bundled OS without any way of performing disaster recovery or method for fresh OS install, whether it be via supplied CD's or hidden partition on the HDD.

S.

 

[peterchurch]

Hmmm, that is an expensive option. Yes, a "generic" version of windows xp will work with youir product key (as long as it is legit); which means if you format and reinstall windows from a third source, it should work with ur key. THis said, formatting doesn't delete the data, just the indexing to the data, so its easily recoverable. THere are several programs out there to aid in data destruction (shredder comes to mind)
Spinal

Cheers for the tip on Shreder I have not seen that before only problem is that you have to know what you are trying to delete. If you put a computer with bank details on it in the public domain the reciever only has to find one set of credit card details or saved passwords (in your browser cache for instance) and thats you account gone or passwords opened I was shocked when paypal finished entering my card details for me today (despite the fact that I use mozila and never cache any data god knows how it did it ...) I would rather spend £40 on a replacement drive and keep the old one as an emergency disk.

 

[Steve_Perry]

Cheers for the tip on Shreder I have not seen that before only problem is that you have to know what you are trying to delete. If you put a computer with bank details on it in the public domain the reciever only has to find one set of credit card details or saved passwords (in your browser cache for instance) and thats you account gone or passwords opened I was shocked when paypal finished entering my card details for me today (despite the fact that I use mozila and never cache any data god knows how it did it ...) I would rather spend £40 on a replacement drive and keep the old one as an emergency disk.

The latest version of Ad-Aware SE allows you to trash/delete stored data even down to the last files that were opened in particular applications, pretty much by scanning the system registry.

S.

 

[scotth_uk]

There's a lot of reading material around on the topic of recovering data from machines. I believe that rule of thumb is write over the data 13 times and it cannot be recovered.

Ther will be plenty of tools available on the web that will securely erase the contents of the disk by following various procedured, including the 13 times method mentioned above.

Most average joes (potential buyers) cannot recover data. Many of the media stories you read are conducted by data recovery professionals who have the appropriate tools to know what they are doing.

If I was you, I would use one of these tools on the hard disk and sell it completely empty with the product key available to the purchaser to chase the installation disks for the operating system.

Also, note that the product key that you have is likely OEM and will probably NOT work with a boxed copy or downloaded copy of the operating system.

 

[Steve_Perry]

There's a lot of reading material around on the topic of recovering data from machines...

Great little utility... SoftLogica's Handy Recovery, extremely useful for recovering deleted files.

S.

 

[McGreggor]

There's a lot of reading material around on the topic of recovering data from machines. I believe that rule of thumb is write over the data 13 times and it cannot be recovered.

13 Times! yes, that'll definatly get rid of your data for good!

I know the US Department of Defense standard is a 7 times overwite, with randomly generated data. Frankly, so long as you overwrite it once its very difficult, if not impossible to recover with any software based tools. There are methods, but you'll need a lab and electron microscope to litterally look underneath characters to see what was last written there.

Oh, and last I heard its compulsary for suppliers to provide hard copies of any pre-installed software, so you should have been given a cd. Unless there is a hidden partition which can be used to create recovery cd's as has been previously mentioned...

 

[Busker]

13 Times! yes, that'll definatly get rid of your data for good!

I know the US Department of Defense standard is a 7 times overwite, with randomly generated data. Frankly, so long as you overwrite it once its very difficult, if not impossible to recover with any software based tools. There are methods, but you'll need a lab and electron microscope to litterally look underneath characters to see what was last written there.

...

The same 7 times overwrite was standard 'military' grade destruction of data in the UK a couple of years back. The data that was written had to be completely random (but that's another story). Go with the new hard disk - they are cheap enough.

 

[scotth_uk]

Hmm. Interesting. Check this site out:

http://www.acesoft.net/secure_delete/secure_delete.htm

I was worried by this line : "There are rumors that government agencies have the capabilities to recover data that has been overwritten as many as 21 times."

And if anyone has a spare microscope and a lifetime to bore themselves to death:

http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery/learn-more-about-microscopy.htm

 

[scotth_uk]

>Go with the new hard disk - they are cheap enough.

But why? A new laptop disk is going to cost at least 30-40 quid, when a wiping boot disk is free......?

 

[andy_k]

as nobody else has mentioned it so far...

installing XP will work from any machine but the product key may not - your original version may have been "machine locked" and have a key that required no activation etc.

More importantly, your original system recovery disks will have all the relevant drivers on them, video fcard, motherboard, modem, network cards etc. Now windows XP may have generic drivers built in but if the hardware is more recent than XP then it may not recognise it.

My advice would be to give Samsung a ring and get a copy of the restore disks from them - get the number of their UK help line (I think they are in Edinburgh) or ring customer services in the UK.

Samsung's technical help and customer service is up there with the best and I'm sure they'll be able to help you.

HTH

Andy

 

[peterchurch]

>Go with the new hard disk - they are cheap enough.

But why? A new laptop disk is going to cost at least 30-40 quid, when a wiping boot disk is free......?

I would argue that if it takes you an hour to faf about overwriting the drive a few times then it has cost more than £40 in your time alone

 

[scotth_uk]

>I would argue that if it takes you an hour to faf about overwriting the drive a few times then it has cost more than £40 in your time alone

Insert boot disk before bed, set to 15 passes, wake up. No time taken.

 

[Sp!ke]

....Or wave the disk past a heavy duty industrial electro magnet

Seriously though, who's going to bother trying to access your data. A simple reformat and reinstall will do the job.

If they wanted any info that badly there's plenty of easier ways to get it like intercepting your mail for one. (have you seen how easy to get a mail redirect is?)

Paranoia is running rife in this forum recently!

 

[Benzowner]

Paranoia is running rife in this forum recently!

Unfortunately, IMO due to media hype, paranoia runs rife everywhere . I would think a reformat is safe enough, I reformatted my PC a few months ago and used one of those search tools to try to recover a game, I think, couldn't find any reference to it.

 

[league67]

Agreeing with sp!ke, if you reformat disk during xp installation there are no software tools to restore your data, all hoopla about rewriting 7 , 13 , 20 odd times is utter rubish. Unless you think that your hard disk can find its way to 'a' security service of some description who are eager enough to get the data and prepared to spend thousands of pounds to do it. My 2 pence, pop in xp disk, boot from cdrom, choose to reformat partition, new install from scratch, job done.

Regards

 

[Spinal]

hmm, i was gonna try deleting this double post, but let me put it to use. The way windows, *nix and apple operating systems delete data is they delete the indexing file to the data. But the data is still there. If you overwrite ALL the data it is safe. BUT it is practically impossible to overwrite all the data. A hard disk has "imperfection" channels, "error gaps" (+ or -, call them what you want) around each block of data. This is to make them more durable, as otherwise if the read/write head wasn't perfectly over the block it would corrupt data around it when writing, and "get confused" when reading data. A second measure, is a read write head will read the sector and statistically take a maximum, so if a single block reads "aBBBBBBBac" it would interpret that as a B. The a and the c are old data. There are tools that allow one to read this old data, creating MANY files from a hard disk, each file a different version of the same file each at a different state. IF one was to be pedantic, an electron microscope would make it nearly impossible to hide data. Military grade re-write, or 7 re-writes was chosen as a good compromise between probablity of data recovery and time (therefore cost) involved. You might be interested in knowing that when a "confidential" government hard disk gets de-commissioned, it isn't re-written 7 times. It gets physically shredded... I wonder why?
Spinal

 

[Spinal]

7, 13 or a billion time will not rid your data for good. If you analyse a hard disk physically, there are "gaps" between tracks and sectors. These are in place so that the read/write head doesn't need to be 100% accurately above the sector/track. Invariably, there are remainders of data in these gaps. When someoone does a software based recover, it looks as the data that was not re-written, or at the overlapping edges that contain enough residual data to makle up a file or file fragment. If there is someone who is a pain in the .... enough (e.g. cia, mi6, mi5, riaa, and governments in general) they will use an electron microscope. Extremely expensive procedure, but can recover data that has been re-written thousands of times. The whole point is not to make it impossible, but to make it impractical. This said, the more you overwrite, the less the chance that there are large overlaps with alot of data. So the more you write, the less the chance, but there is always a chance.
Spinal
OH while on subject, let me advertise a little! I currently am registering a company that disposes of redundant technology. We will collect from the heathrow area and south kensington. The disposal for end users is free, for companies there is a fee. Under request (and a nominal payment) we can issue certificates of data destruction. If hard disks are to be destroyed, they re-written at least 13 times, then they are demagnetised with a magnet, and finally, physically opened and either physically broken and brought to recycling center, or put to some good use (i.e. making clocks!) Cd's are blasted with microwave radiation, separating the layers and making the dye illegible. If the hardware can be re-used, all magnetic storage media will be re-written a minimum of 20 times and we will attempt to retrieve data before re-useing it. If data is still retrievable the media will be destroyed. We are going to start a format and return branch, but at the moment, this is rendered hard as hard disks are so sensitive that the royal mail destroys so many of them! When the paperwork is sorted, I'll post some more info if you are interested.
Spinal