My wife's Acer 6th Gen Intel laptop has been replaced with a new
HP laptop that runs Windows 11.

I want to prepare the Acer for donation. What should I do?
I have never done a Repair or Recover (I don't even know the term
at the moment) with a laptop. I am afraid of messing with unique
drivers if I do a scorched earth, return-to-the-factory-settings
move. I do want to strip out everything that relates to her
ownership.

Advice gratefully accepted. TIA.

On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 07:04:37 -0500, Kirk Bubul <khbubul@charter.net>
wrote:

>My wife's Acer 6th Gen Intel laptop has been replaced with a new
>HP laptop that runs Windows 11.
>
> I want to prepare the Acer for donation. What should I do?
>I have never done a Repair or Recover (I don't even know the term
>at the moment) with a laptop. I am afraid of messing with unique
>drivers if I do a scorched earth, return-to-the-factory-settings
>move. I do want to strip out everything that relates to her
>ownership.
>
>Advice gratefully accepted. TIA.

If you don't want to do a "format c:" or equivalent, I suggest this:

-create a new user with full admin rights; login to it
-in that user, unstall any & all software other than Windows 10,
unless you want do donate that software too. If you don't, any
licences will basically be lost to you;
-don't forget to uninstall Chrome and Firefox, if you have it;
-if you had Chrome and Firefox, got to "c:\program files" and delete
their folders; also delete any leftover folders from any software you
uninstalled;
-using the admin tools, delete any other user from the laptop;
-go to the C. folder that saves all user's data and config files (in
english it should be "c:\users) and delete every folder that is not
YOUR NEW USER's folder. DO NOT delete c\users
-reboot, download ccleaner and run it.

That's it, I think.

On 10/29/2021 8:04 AM, Kirk Bubul wrote:
> My wife's Acer 6th Gen Intel laptop has been replaced with a new
> HP laptop that runs Windows 11.
>
> I want to prepare the Acer for donation. What should I do?
> I have never done a Repair or Recover (I don't even know the term
> at the moment) with a laptop. I am afraid of messing with unique
> drivers if I do a scorched earth, return-to-the-factory-settings
> move. I do want to strip out everything that relates to her
> ownership.
>
> Advice gratefully accepted. TIA.
>

Creating a new administrative account and deleting any other account
would go a long way. If there s a "return to factory settings" option,
this seems like a good time to use it. What have you got to lose?
In a business setting, I think they would reformat the hard drive and
reinstall the OS before passing it along to someone else. And if there
was a simpler way, they probably wouldn't do that. And the bottom line
is that that's probably the ultimate best answer, as deleting a file
doesn't mean it's not still on the hard drive. If someone REALLY wanted
to search for files you've deleted, with the right software, they could
almost surely "resurrect" some. But, I am just another user, and not an
expert. If it were me, I would "wipe the hard drive". Then I would
reinstall the OS if it was convenient, and let the next owner worry
about it if it's not. I guess a lot depends on who the next owner is
going to be, as well as the potential loss. If you are not going to wipe
the hard drive, then I would donate it to someone you trust. I hope
this helps.

On 10/29/21 8:04 AM, this is what Kirk Bubul wrote:
> My wife's Acer 6th Gen Intel laptop has been replaced with a new
> HP laptop that runs Windows 11.
>
> I want to prepare the Acer for donation. What should I do?
> I have never done a Repair or Recover (I don't even know the term
> at the moment) with a laptop. I am afraid of messing with unique
> drivers if I do a scorched earth, return-to-the-factory-settings
> move. I do want to strip out everything that relates to her
> ownership.
>
> Advice gratefully accepted. TIA.
>
I guess you know that files can be found in free space given the tools and time, thus a format does nothing for you. There is a program
'sdelete' that zero's out a drive's free space. I personally think that would be enough to be relatively safe.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sdelete

--
Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.2 64bit, Dell Inspiron 5570 laptop
Quad Core i7-8550U, 16G Memory, 512G SSD, 750G & 1TB HDDs

On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 07:04:37 -0500, Kirk Bubul wrote:

> My wife's Acer 6th Gen Intel laptop has been replaced with a new
> HP laptop that runs Windows 11.
>
> I want to prepare the Acer for donation. What should I do?
> I have never done a Repair or Recover (I don't even know the term
> at the moment) with a laptop. I am afraid of messing with unique
> drivers if I do a scorched earth, return-to-the-factory-settings
> move. I do want to strip out everything that relates to her
> ownership.
>
> Advice gratefully accepted. TIA.

Can't she speak for herself?

On 10/29/2021 9:35 AM, mechanic wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 07:04:37 -0500, Kirk Bubul wrote:
>
>> My wife's Acer 6th Gen Intel laptop has been replaced with a new
>> HP laptop that runs Windows 11.
>>
>> I want to prepare the Acer for donation. What should I do?
>> I have never done a Repair or Recover (I don't even know the term
>> at the moment) with a laptop. I am afraid of messing with unique
>> drivers if I do a scorched earth, return-to-the-factory-settings
>> move. I do want to strip out everything that relates to her
>> ownership.
>>
>> Advice gratefully accepted. TIA.
>
> Can't she speak for herself?

<she> Take this thing and bury it in the back yard.

<he> OK.

That's how it works.

*******

Digging a hole for the Acer is easy.

1) Back up drive, if you are in any way suspicious of following recipe.

2) Insert DBAN CD, boot the Acer, do *single pass* erasure.
DBAN CD puts up a picture at the end of the run, and doesn't
have a prompt. Remove CD, then power cycle once the new DVD is loaded
in the tray.

DBAN isn't the best way, but I'm trying to make this easy.

And note that since new hardware is advancing faster than defunct
dev projects, stuff like this will not work forever. UEFI only machines
will not be able to boot this, some day. You might need to re-package it
with rufus.ie, onto a USB stick. I haven't tested that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darik's_Boot_and_Nuke

3) Insert Win10 DVD, install matching bitness of OS, plus matching SKU.
If "winver" said the machine had "Win10 x64 Home" then install
"Win10 x64 Home". A legit Win10 era machine (2015 to present) will
have the license key in ACPI MSDM table in the BIOS, so the OS can
auto-activate for you. While you could use Nirsoft ProduKey to extract the
license key on the current system, that should not be necessary.

4) When the machine comes up, don't connect the network. Create a
local account called "user", password "user". Start : Run : netplwiz
will allow the machine to auto-login. This is suited to showing
the donation desk, that the machine works. Don't forget to bring the
power adapter with it. Write "user:user" on a PostIt note and stick
that into the battery bay.

5) Drivers are auto-installed, by the OS, generally within about two
reboots of the machine. Examples of exceptions would be a Hauppauge
TV Tuner, where Hauppauge has not given the drivers to MSFT. Lots
of other hardware, the drivers are just downloaded from MSFT after
install is done. Check with Device Manager, that all the items have
been correctly identified.

6) At the current time, you can download win10 or win11, as both
download links still exist. You can download Win10 from something
as crusty as a Win7 machine. With Win11, I might be tempted to
download from a Win10 machine.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows10

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 <=== "wont end well :-) "

The Windows 11, obviously not being worth the time.
Unfit for humans at the moment. With the stupid double menus
that will drive a recipient nutz. (But maybe that only happens
on an Upgrade install.) I would not spend a dime on it, in its
current shape.

Paul

On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 07:04:37 -0500, Kirk Bubul wrote:

> I want to prepare the Acer for donation. What should I do?

Take out the hard drive?

--
s|b

On 10/29/2021 8:04 AM, Kirk Bubul wrote:
> My wife's Acer 6th Gen Intel laptop has been replaced with a new
> HP laptop that runs Windows 11.
>
> I want to prepare the Acer for donation. What should I do?
> I have never done a Repair or Recover (I don't even know the term
> at the moment) with a laptop. I am afraid of messing with unique
> drivers if I do a scorched earth, return-to-the-factory-settings
> move. I do want to strip out everything that relates to her
> ownership.
>
> Advice gratefully accepted. TIA.
>
The first thing I would do is make sure all my personal pictures,
spreadsheets, word processing, etc files are backed up to an external
device.

The second thing I would do is to delete all personal data files using a
shredder program. I know the McAfee has one as part of their security
suite. There are several others and many people will debate the merits
of them. For most people this will be the Documents folder, but other
may have created additional folders.

I would then install all of the programs the I HAVE INSTALLED, and the
delete the corresponding folders in both Program folders, and in the
C:/USER folder. I would make sure that the temp files in the C:/user
and C:/windows temp folders are deleted.

On Fri, 29 Oct 2021 17:08:31 -0400, knuttle <keith_nuttle@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>I would then install all of the programs the I HAVE INSTALLED, and the
>delete the corresponding folders in both Program folders, and in the
>C:/USER folder. I would make sure that the temp files in the C:/user
>and C:/windows temp folders are deleted.

Ummm... Uninstall? ;-)

--
croy