Ron505 Posted December 15, 2016 Report Share Posted December 15, 2016 It is time for me to get an upgraded laptop from my company. I would like to make sure all of my browsing and downloads (mainly forum stuff, no porn), is removed before sending it back. Can anyone tell me the easiest way to remove all of my crap off of it, so that they can't see how much I browse? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
motocat12 Posted December 15, 2016 Report Share Posted December 15, 2016 log in an admin and delete the user account Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScubaCinci Posted December 15, 2016 Report Share Posted December 15, 2016 It depends how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go. If you are only worried about brower history, cookies and such, you can do that through the browsers - if you have multiple browsers, each would need to be done separately. It's very easy - Google for how to for each. If you are worried about other files you may have had on there (i,e,. in appropiate pics/movies) the best method is to take out the drive and take a hammer to it but I suspect the company wants their hardware back intact. Of course, you could buy a new drive and replace it if it's worth spending the money on though it will lack the OS and any software that was on there.. You can secure erase a drive but that would wipe the entire drive, OS and all. There are tools for this and may differ for spinning platter drives vs SSDs and require booting from another drive (i.e. this is more technically demanding than other methods). There are apps like CCleaner that have a function specifically for this but you may be limited to what you can install on your work PC if they have taken away admin rights. If that's the case, there is an app that you can run from a thumbdrive (requires no installation on the PC) that can also perform this function. http://portableapps.com/apps/security/eraser-portable Another solution... http://www.howtogeek.com/137108/how-securely-overwrite-free-space-in-windows/ If you do not have full right access to the entire drive due to restrictions on the Windows Group Policy, you may be SOL. Most of the above only address the "free space" - when you delete a file, it doesn't really get deleted, only the index reference to it gets deleted. This is how you can recover accidental deletions. Existing valid files like cookies, temp files and the like will still be there unless you clear them out with the browser or CCLeaner. No guarantees that there aren't other temp files somewhere else that leave clues as to your previous doings. All of that said, odds are they won't even look at the drive contents. Many companies remove the hard drives and destroy them and then donate the pc to charity or send for recycling. Some also may repurpose it for temp employees or as an emergency backup in which case they woudl re-image the drive, effectively erasing all of your data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron505 Posted December 16, 2016 Author Report Share Posted December 16, 2016 Thank you Joe! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zx3vfr Posted December 19, 2016 Report Share Posted December 19, 2016 2nd Ccleaner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Casper Posted December 21, 2016 Report Share Posted December 21, 2016 @ReconRat used to have a DoD approved wiping program. Took like two days, but wrote zeros across the entire drive like eight times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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