Cleaning your PC

August 2, 2007

Scott Hanselmans Computer Zen – The Developers Quitting Your Job Technology Checklist:

However, I did have a personal laptop, and these things tend to get reused in my experience at companies. Heres the checklist I used to get ready to leave.All this assumes that youre turning in your hardware and your IT department either:

a. might not toast/re-image your system immediately
b . theyll stick it on a shelf and get to it whenever
c. youre paranoid.

Just because youre paranoid doesnt mean theyre not after you.

Remember that if youre a Domain User, someone can, and likely will, log in as you later after youve left. Every byte in your hard drive is theirs and always has been. So, tidy up.

A great set of instructions that goes beyond the title. You should look at this any time you want to get rid of a PC. It will ensure that little or no personal information is left on it. I’m always surprised by some of the things I’ve found on PCs I bought on Craigslist or Ebay: were I a nefarious character, a lot of the information people left on their computer (financial records, for example) could have represented a major problem to them.

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