Inspiron 5100 Laptop ... Old Laptop....Need Some Help Please..I just Have 1 Question

???

DBAN

Uuummmm no of course I have heard of google.... I did google it and I could not find a definitive answer. It was more like try this and if that does not work try this. I was hoping for someone to give me like step by step directions. I saw what you put as a response,  I am kinda a rookie when it comes to computer dialect. I am a videographer, so I use my computer for that and email, and Facebook and marketing for my videography.... When it comes to technical problems such as a slow computer or adding memory or adding ram, I am sssooo lost. I kept re-reading your response and I am like " this person is trying to tell me something " If there is a chance that you could maybe put it in rookie terms, I would really appreciate it. If not that's cool to, I appreciate your time in reading it and responding to my question... Thanks again..

Uuummmm no of course I have heard of google.... I did google it and I could not find a difinitve answer. It was more like try this and if that does not work try this. I was hoping for someone to give me like step by step directions. I saw what you put as a response,  I am kinda a rookie when it comes to computer dialect. I am a videographer, so I use my computer for that and email, and Facebook and marketing for my videography.... When it comes to technical problems such as a slow computer or adding memory or adding ram, I am sssooo lost. I kept re-reading your response and I am like " this person is trying to tell me something " If there is a chance that you could maybe put it in rookie terms, I would really apprecite it. If not thats cool to, I appreciate your time in reading it and responding to my question... Thanks again..

I guess you've never heard of Google.

Hi JackShack,

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my post and a bigger thanks to replying to it. Any suggestions if I do not have the cd's ? I can not find them any where ? I really appreciate in your taking the time to read and answer my question. I look forward in hearing from you..

If you still have the CDs that were shipped with the computer, why not just re-install the operating system and whatever applications you want on the machine?  That will be sufficient wiping for the stated purpose.

Completely scrubbing the disk with something like DBAN is only helpful if you are trying to prevent moderately technically educated people from retrieving whatever may be on it.  And it does no good whatever anyway if the people looking for your data are capable of using advanced technology recovery systems.

If you have misplaced the CDs there is an alternative, though the time it takes rivals a re-installation.  Use Windows Explorer to examine the contents of the My Documents folder.  Delete all folders along with their contents that you wish to remove from the computer.  When you have finished, make sure you empty the trash bin.  Close Windows Explorer and open My Computer.  Right click the hard drive, open the Properties window, and click the Tools tab.  In the box that opens you should find at least two items, one for error checking and one for defragmenting the drive.  Click on the error checking button first.  You should find that the program doesn't run immediately, and instead tells you the error check will execute when you restart the computer.  This is necessary to give the error checking program full access to the drive.  Once the error check is complete and it reports that errors have been corrected, go back to the Tools for the hard drive and select the defragment tool.  This will take quite a while so make sure the laptop is plugged in.

As you might know, deleting a file doesn't remove its data from the drive.  Instead, the filename gets the first character changed to a special character and the sector map for the drive gets changed to show that the sectors containing the data are available for use.

Emptying the trash bin removes the protection normally accorded to the data that enables you to "Unerase" it at a later time if you suddenly realize you needed the file.  This action sets up the data to be overwritten.

When the defragment tool is activated, the data from all applications, data files (that haven't been deleted and removed from the trash), and Windows System files is re-written to other random areas of the disk, sometimes several times, in preparation for being re-written to consecutive sectors of the hard drive.  During this operation the sectors that hold the data for the deleted files will be overwritten several times while Defrag lines up the data being kept so that it can be re-written to the consecutive sectors mentioned earlier.

This is by no means as thorough as a security program that overwrites all the data up to ten times with random characters, but it works well enough to keep data private.  The usual recovery tools that depend on having the sectors identified to a specific file will be unable to locate the files' sectors since the information is no longer easily deciphered.  It also takes care of the directory since the old filenames are also overwritten.

DBAN will wipe it.   White Canyon Software has Wipedrive.

Jackshack..

Thank you ssoooooo much, my son will appreciate it when he gets home. I really appreciate in your taking the time  in typing out step by step directions. That is what I was looking for. I am in the middle of it right now... yea it is taking a little while. That is fine as I am editing a movie all day. I will let you know how it turns out. whether it works out or not your time is valuable and thank you for taking it to help me...