[Ferrante]

I had a hard drive failure and my friend gave me a hard drive (250gig) from her older computer as she just bought a new computer. On the hard drive is Win7 as I have. Is there a safe way to eliminate her completely from the hard drive without having to erase and reinstall a fresh version of Win7? I am listed as a USER and I thought I had changed myself to administrator, but I am not sure. There are tons of things still related to her on this HD. What is the best way to accomplish getting rid of her stuff and references to her and making myself the only user and administrator? Thanks.

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Your friend is very lax with security, as that drive should have been wiped by her before giving it to you (I'm not insulating anything about yourself, by the way, with this remark).

Your best bet is a fresh installation of the operating system from the Windows 7 DVD, if only out of respect for the privacy of your friend.

[Neil Jones]

Your friend is very lax with security, as that drive should have been wiped by her before giving it to you (I'm not insulating anything about yourself, by the way, with this remark).

Your best bet is a fresh installation of the operating system from the Windows 7 DVD, if only out of respect for the privacy of your friend.

[Ferrante]

Thanks for your suggestion. Now, the Win7 installation is a upgrade from XP or Vista, I cannot remember. I do have my upgrade disc. Would that be sufficient to install a new install or because it is an upgrade, would anything she had with XP or Vista still have references to her or is all of that placed in the windows.old folder on the C drive? Also, if I attempt that, will I be prompted to install a fresh install or one that offers to keep present folders intact?

[rshaffer61]

To further cover what Neil has stated the install needs to be formatted to make it completely legal.
As of right now you are running on her installation and registration number which is illegal unless she has given you the original installation disks for you to format the system and reinstall fresh.
To be honest I'm surprised the system even booted up considering the systems would have to be basically identical to work correctly.
By doing a fresh install you also make sure the drivers are loaded specific for your system.

[Ferrante]

I can certainly get the disc from her as her new computer came with its own. I want to make sure everything is legal and done the right way. When you say "reformat", does that mean reinstalling XP then Vista then Win 7 or can it be done with just the Win 7 upgrade disc which is also what she has?