Hi,
I have a IBM X31 that I will be returning to my company.
I have used this laptop for 2 years and have a good deal of personal information on the computer.
Can someone tell me how I restore the computer to remove all personal info.
Thanks,
Dave H

Hi there Dave,
Welcome to CompuForums! I hope that you post often here, even after this has been sorted out for you.

I am assuming that you would like to remove all traces on the drive? Well, it is impossible to completely destroy the data without shredding the physical hard drive, but you can run some software that will prevent casual snooping around the drive, and will make the job of professional data recovery people a lot harder, if not impossible.

You should try DBAN - it's free, and can be loaded onto a blank CD-R, a floppy, or a flash drive.
Visit it here for more information:
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
The interface isn't very pretty, but it does the job.

__________________
Thanks,
Ash
CF Founder
Great Webhosting. Shared starting at $2 per month. VPSes starting at $6 per month.
www.Centicero.com
Want to get in touch? Send me a PM | Do you want to continue receiving free help? Or do you want this site to close? Become a premium member.

I would format the hard drive using a dos bootdisk doing

format c:

then i would do a low level format from bios.

that should be sufficient unless they are super geeky inspector people.

WARNING THIS WILL REMOVE THE OPERATING SYSTEM AND ALL OF THE CONTENTS OF THE HARDRIVE. HOWEVER SOME LOGS MAY SURVIVE CONTAINING INFO SUCH AS FILES STORED PREVIOUSLY.

__________________
-Rob Putt - Blog!
CompuForums Secondary Administrator
+ Download the CompuForums Thread Viewer!
+ Add yourself to the Member Map!
+ Be sure that you are up-to-date with the rules.
+ Still Not A Member? Register Now!
+ Contact Us
+ Email Me! - rob at compuforums dot org
+ipHideAway - Unfilter Anything Anywhere! Anonamize your surfing today!!