What to do with a broken laptop?

[RosieH]

I have an old dead laptop that I was thinking of flogging on ebay for parts. I've not used it in about 3 years since it died. Kept crashing, until one day it just wouldn't start at all - the start up page said operating system not found, and then the screen goes black.

But, it occurred to me that there may be info on there that I wouldn't want other people to be able to retrieve (not sure what exactly, more that I've heard you should do some kind of wipe before letting someone have your old laptop). What might be the risk?

[????]

Magnets....Biiiiiiiiitch

[RosieH]

I should show it a magnet, baaaaastaaaard?

[DJKillaQueen]

Hi Rosie, the hard drive can be removed and plugged into another laptop and read like an external drive (I have the cables to do that). Then you can see if there's any files you want to keep before wiping the drive. It would also be worth running a virus scan on it too. If you problem is an OS corruption from a virus, that can sometimes find it and repair the OS (meaning your old laptop would boot up as normal).

[????]

not a Breaking Bad fan then Rosie?

[RosieH]

Ahh, no, never seen it. It's on my to-do list.

And my prolonged "bastard", on re-reading, sounds a bit west country. That's not very cool. I need to be cooler.

DJKQ, good advice, thanks.

[????]

...actually, i think it's 'Biitch..... Magnets' on reflection, but a you'll see, when you get round to it

[ed_pete]

One option would be to sell it minus the hard disk. Take it out and smash it with a hammer before disposing of it. Alternatively download this software http://www.dban.org/download burn it to a blank CD/DVD and boot the laptop with it. The software can the be used to obliterate the data on the drive completely rendering it irrecoverable.

[ianr]

If you're booting the "dead" laptop from an optical drive, you might as well do so with a system rescue or recovery CD, and check at the same time whether the problem is nothing more than a need to rewrite the boot sector or repair the OS.

[Annette Curtain]

I'd go for a much more satisfying option myself:

1 - Enter a light trance like state of meditation, visualise ALL the minutes-hours-days of frustration that machine cost you.

2 - Quietly raise yourself up onto your feet and SMASH THE SH*T OUT OF THE THING (with a sledgehammer)

3 - Have a Chamomile tea.

[El Pibe]

Aaah, Office-Space-Therapy!!

[Annasfield]

???? Wrote:

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> Magnets....Biiiiiiiiitch

Haha, brilliant

[the-e-dealer]

Yeah smash up a perfectly good hard drive.

[bob]

Same problem I had sounds like the hard drive has crashed if its 3 years old no one seems to want any bits of of them

second take out hard drive and hammer it

Bob S

[the-e-dealer]

Nah OS not found means it read this disk but the boot sector has been damaged. You would HD not found if the disk didnt talk. Probably a fairly simple job to revitalise the Boot sector.

[right-clicking]

If you do not have your windows installation disk and cannot find one to borrow. Download and burn a Linux live CD,http://www.ubuntu.com/download

Boot off that disc, "mount" the hard drive to access files you want, copy to a flash drive.

If you have the windows disk, load the disk and click on the option "repair my pc" that will launch system recovery click on command prompt, when the box opens copy and paste this command...... bootrec.exe /fixmbr (if it is a broken master boot record)

if that fails use the same disc and re-install windows. good luck!

right-clicking

[Loz]

ed_pete Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> One option would be to sell it minus the hard disk. Take it out and smash it with a hammer

> before disposing of it. Alternatively download this software http://www.dban.org/download burn it

> to a blank CD/DVD and boot the laptop with it. The software can the be used to obliterate the data on

> the drive completely rendering it irrecoverable.

Seconded for DBAN. Otherwise, yes, rip the hard disk out and sell it without it. Destroy the disk with a hammer.

[shaman]

Try boot manager software or use a recovery disk, however to be safe if need data remove hd and connect to suitable computer to transfer data then use repair or restore. If is only 3 yrs old there is a good chance there is a recovery partition installed these are access by pressing one of the F. Keys during startup alternately pressing F2 or F12 to access boot options there is usually a recovery partition option to repar or wipe. If dont care about data then just choose clean install and data will be wipe for all but the most expert hacker. The F key combinations sometime very among different companies so just look up your laptop.

Anymore help just pm me if want i can just wipe drive for you have all the gear hardly takes anytime.