Then on the other hand, if the person who receives your computer knows about computers, they'll do a clean installĪnyway, since that's the only way that an acquirer knows for sure that the computer is free of problems, configuration mistakes and viruses. If that's something that concerns you, then you'll want to do a Hilary Clinton-style hard drive erasure, where even government agencies will have a hard time extracting the old data.
#Reset pc to factory software
The fact that your hard drive still holds your previously existing data, at least to the extent that it wasn't over-written by the new install, means that someone who has physical access to your computer, as well as access to the kind of software typicallyĪvailable to law enforcement agencies and the knowledge to use it, can still read your old data. Local admin accounts were not set up on any of these PC's. The employees who had used the PC's no longer work here. Windows is like me after three beers: completely oblivious. I work for a small company and have been asked to reset a few company owned laptop PCs back to factory settings for re-use. SoĮven though your hard drive is still filled with your old data, the new copy of Windows can't see it, can't find it and knows nothing about it. To do this, the partition table in the BIOS (in older computers) or the UEFI is erased. When you do a factory restore, your hard drive is effectively erased. Whether this satisfies your need for privacy depends, quite frankly, on how paranoid you are. Your computer was setup at the factory or what other software was included by the manufacturer. Microsoft can't do a factory restore, obviously, since Microsoft doesn't know how
This reverts your computer to exactly as it was when it left the factory, as if you had pressed the power button for the veryįactory restore is a procedure created by the computer manufacturer specifically for your model, and therefore you'll find detailed directions on the manufacturer's website. The best way to prepare your computer for re-sale, and the only fair way, in my view, is to do what's known as a factory restore.