need your help before Sunday May 25th 2003

[chriswhitelaw]

I plan on getting rid of my computer as some of you know. Well the computer was sold but the person that wants it from me wants me to register windows xp becuase I have 18 days left to register and leave everything as is. What should I do if I don't wipe out the hard drive the person that gets this computer will have access to my personal info. so what do I do? how do I delete accounts so there not available to the person that gets it?
passwords,credit card info. ect.........

[Imperion1]

I'd low-level format the drive. Then re-install XP fresh, if you are giving him the original XP disc. By the way, you don't have to register XP. But, you do have to activate it.
If you are not giving him your XP disc, then by no means should you activate it. That would make it harder for you to use XP, can't run the same XP on 2 different machines.

And, there is no reason for the person who bought your machine to get the software or anything else thats on it. When you sold the machine, you only sold the hardware.

You can get the program to do a low-level format from the hard drive manufacturer's website.

[comp_nut]

Hi
format it twice ,this person brought computer not your personnal
info or os and if you did just give a fresh os

private info is yours

[DocEvi1]

Personal info is yours and selling your old PC is a tricky business.

It's not just XP you have to think about, what about your MS Office software, or the Paint Shop Pro license, that music CD you bought and transfered to MP3 to see how it worked...

If you built the machine you know what make of hard-drive you put in, goto their website and download their drive manager (Maxtor's is MaxBlast for instance), zero fill the drive. What that does is write a 0 to every part of the drive literally obliterating anything that was there before it. you could also do a low-level format.

As for software, well it depends on the agreement if you have to give it to him/her. For instance if you sold-as-seen you have to give all the software that was loaded on to it, that includes Games, everything. By law you have to give him/her the original CD's and re-purchase everything yourself otherwise you will break the copyright acts.

If I were you, I would re-format the PC in the manner in which I said above and speak to the person you are selling it to. If they want all your software charge them more, XP retails at £150 ish, charge them that... As said before XP makes it difficult for you to install the same copy onto different machines, it simply isn't worth the hassle.

Stefan