struggling with the old stuff still on this laptop

[thelma]

Hello ,

Very stupid question perhaps, if you clean the disk, will that take everything away the former users put on the PC ?

Thanks for any answers in advance,
Cheers,
Thelma

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Hello ,

Very stupid question perhaps, if you clean the disk, will that take everything away the former users put on the PC ?

Thanks for any answers in advance,
Cheers,
Thelma

That's not a stupid question. If you completely wipe the disk, then yes, it will take everything away. The disk will be essentially a blank disk with no data, OS, etc. left on it. If you don't want to lose any data from the disk, then you would need to copy the data over to another disk before wiping it. If you want a bootable copy of the disk, then you would need to clone it to another disk before wiping (Macrium Reflect Free is an excellent program for cloning).

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I'd ask them if you can remove the hdd and not void the warranty

 

[thelma]

Mike, you're taking the "Mike Mikey" out off me .

By now I know that a HDD is a hard drive disk, and What Warranty after 12 years and as the 3th owner ?????.

Lady Jeannie ( almost a Roling Stones song ), I use CCleaner a lot. So I could use it to wipe clean and reinstall ?
I am now struggling with the old stuff still on this laptop. Managed to get a lot off by simply deleting.
I downloaded my things ( Toshiba external USB Harddrive ) from the now finished Dell to this HP and now it's all a bit off a mess.
I cannot get rid of the old owner," I think" when I delete her completely I cannot do anything with the PC afterwards. That's all locked up stuff.
I will need to read up much more about this " wipe clean " before making drastic mistakes.

 

[MilesAhead]

If you have a WinPE boot USB then you could run CCleaner Portable disk wipe utility to wipe the entire disk. I have never tried it as disk wiping is a scary thing to play around with.

I don't have a guinea pig machine.

 

[thelma]

Hello and

Thanks for the suggestions. I have looked into Macrium before and find it quiet difficult to understand. Will read that thread through again. I also have no ginny pig to try it on.

 

[Barman58]

Thelma, if your intention is to wipe and re-install there is no need to treat the wipe and install as two operations. Obviously you need to backup your personal stuff before you start.

If you have access to and decide to use the manufacturer's restore this will by default wipe the disk as part of the restore

If you decide to perform a clean install from "proper" media then part way through the install you have a screen where you have to decide and tell the installer the location you wish to install to - this page contains a drive options (advanced) button which allows you to wipe the disk and also set up partitions etc. If you go this way you will need to make sure that drivers are available and you preferably have them on a USB ready and waiting, also you need to consider if you wish to retain any recovery partition if so just remove all other partitions. You would also need access to the original COA for a key to activate

The issue you have with the original user should be an easy fix, log-in with the original owner ID and create a new user, make sure this new user is an administrator account, log in in future as this new user - set things up as your want and when happy delete the original owner account, (you can also select to place all the Original owner stuff in a folder on the desktop which may be archived just in case

 

[ThrashZone]

Thanks for starting a new thread Nigel,

Thelma that reply was directed at the other person where they were sending the machine back as defective

Your issue might be best doing the Macrium reflect system image before attempting to do anything else yet.

First after the system image is created I would post a disk management screen shot so we can see what is on the disk it may have a system recovery partition you can use
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

If it doesn't we can look into the clean install that Nigel suggests

 

[thelma]

Hello there and thanks Barman for starting this new thread. I should not have hijacked the other. It started with a little question but then got a little confusing.

Now I understand Mike, sorry .

Will do the "Macrium reflect" as you all suggest it and post a disk management screen shot. Need to expand my knowledge here

 

[thelma]

OK, I have downloaded the free Version of Macrium Reflect 64 bit.

Am reading now the know-how.

Have 2 questions ;

Do I do cloning in my situation or do I do Imagining ?

Can I ( which ever I do of the 2 ) put it on a clean USB stick which has 64 GB ?

Thank you very much for your answer in advance,

Cheers,
Thelma

 

[DavidE]

imho, use Imaging.

Cloning is intended to make a "copy" of the drive to another drive so you can replace the current drive with the cloned drive and be up and running in minutes.
If your backup device is a USB stick you should use imaging, i don't think a clone on a USB stick (if possible) would work if the current HD fails.
If you want to use cloning i think you would need a HD or SSD for the "cloned device".

I only use imaging, i don't use cloning.
You can save multiple images on a single backup device.
You can only save 1 (the latest) clone on a backup device.

I keep many backup images on multiple HD's so i have a much better chance of recovery should i ever need them.
With imaging you do need to restore the image to a HD/SSD, so that takes some time.
It takes me 10-20 minutes to restore a backup image.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Do you have some cd's to create the recovery disk ?
cd-R disks are good enough the file is pretty small but is needed to ever restore the C drive + another partitions windows needs for booting
Post the disk management screen shot.

I personally would create a system image not a clone.

 

[thelma]

Disk management screen shot :

 

[thelma]

Sorry, it's all in the annoying Dutch language, cannot change that in windows 7 sp 1 professional.

 

[thelma]

I have just made a recovery disk and labeled it with todays date.

It took some searching, is called "systeem herstel schijf ".

How can I find out if it really worked ? Can I just play it off ?

 

[ThrashZone]

You'd need to insert the recovery cd and shut down
Power up and continuously tap either using the F8 or F12 key on startup = Boot options vary on computers.
If you see the boot options just select the cd/ dvd listing and you'll get Press any key to boot to cd.

Reflect will load.

To exit just click the red button on the bottom left once or twice and a popup message will appear asking if you want to close and restart/ Yes.

You have a functional recovery disk if all works

You can while you're there to try it's search but unless the external device with the image is connected it won't show up as another drive/ disk to find all you would see is the C Drive.
But the option on the Top Search for an image or file is where it is located.
Just use I believe the Computer listing and you'll see C Drive if that's all that is connected.

 

[Barman58]

thelma, I think this may help with the language, at least partly

Language packs - Microsoft Windows

Although you can only install multiple languages on ultimate (or Enterprise), you can switch language on pro at least you used to be able to - @Kari is the language man

 

[thelma]

Hey listen to this !!! I am making an image at this very moment with macrium !!!! BRILLIANT I followed a video on YouTube. Takes ages so this is send from smart phone. Be back later ��

 

[ThrashZone]

 

[thelma]

Back again, the imaging took ages ( about 3 hours ), is that normal ?

I had to go out during and on my return it told me the storage place was not big enough, so I had to cancel the process.

In my post # 10 in this thread, I wondered about the size of the USB being only 64 GB.

So for the moment not made the imaging jet but it was a good exercise as with being dyslexic the video's always work the best for me, reading a long explication confuses, although I always put things in steps to follow on paper.

I did not reduce the size of the items to store in Macrium reflect because I am unsure how to open them after and restore them to normal size.
Do you think I could use this 64 Gb USB stick if I do decide to minimise the size of the items to store ?

Thanks for any help and suggestions in advance.

And Mr. Barman, I will look again into your idea's about the language change, though I am pretty sure it's not possible in windows 7 prof.