wiping laptops

[buzzyb]

Af'noon all.

My employer has chosen to give away a number of laptops and not bother to wipe the hard drive - bit foolish but there you go.

Anyway, how do I wipe the hard drive of an IBM Thinkpad and install a version of Windows?

The laptop also has a CD drive, if I wipe the hard drive will that also uninstall the driver for the CD?

Any other help and advice much appreciated

Many thanks

B

[ChuckFickens]

try turning it on and as soon as it turns on start tapping the F11 key and it might take you into the recovery manager from where you can restore it back to factory settings

(I say might because you've not said what thinkpad and also because it's possible that the recovery partition might have been removed at some point in the past)

(and don't worry about the CD drive, windows has drivers built in for CD drives)

[TTG]

if chucks advice does not work you can get a copy Windows xp from ebay for about £45 (if you have not got one!). Installing a new copy gives you the option of formatting the drive.

[buzzyb]

Morning

Thanks for the advice, I had a thought there are admin rights on the laptop will I still be able to wipe it?

B

[ChuckFickens]

Won't be a problem, the admin security is for windows and to wipe the laptop you don't boot it into windows so any security won't come in to effect.