[lutefisk19]

Believe it or not I have a toshiba laptop that hasn’t been used in years, with windows xp. I want to wipe it clean and dispose of it, can you tell me the best way to do erase everything. Thanks for the help, Em

[TeamKomando:John]

If you have the original installation media that came with the laptop you could pop in the Windows XP reinstall disk and perform a clean installation that will wipe data from the disk.

Your best solution would be to download this https://dban.org/blancco-drive-eraser/ disc image and burn to a CD or DVD using the program image burn at https://www.imgburn.com/ when you boot this in your laptop it will offer to wipe the disk.

Alternatively you could remove the Hard drive from the laptop and keep it as an archive copy of your data with an external enclosure.

[lutefisk19]

Thanks very much, I think easiest will be to pull out the hard drive and just destroy it with a hammer…..LOL

[Walt]

The easy way is to put the laptop in a bucket of water with some bleach for 24 hours, then garbage. Walt

[lutefisk19]

Thanks Walt, But already pulled the hard drive and took over to a computer store that grinds them to a pulp, LOL. But will remember that bleach idea, interesting.

[Author]

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