Is there a way to delete everything from a HDD bar the OS? I'm selling a laptop and I want everything off it.
do you want to format the hdd so nothing can be recovered? there are several free disk wiping tools that write random data to the hard drive(you will have no os if you do this),do a few passes and it should be good. reinstall the os after if you plan on doing that.
I don't have the OS on disk. It was pre-installed with Vista. I don't have the box or anything. You see I thought it was dead when it blue screened but it turns out the HDD was just loose but by the time I figured that out (About 2 weeks ago) I bought a new laptop.
For wiping the hard drive. If you want to reinstall Vista but don't have the key usually laptops have the key on a sticker on the bottom of the laptop. If it doesn't have a sticker showing the key you can use this. This tells you the Key of practically any program that requires a Key to be ran on the computer, that way you can reinstall Vista if you feel the need to do so. As far as getting an ISO of a Vista CD just look around on the Web, not sure if Microsoft still hosts clean trials that you can just type a key in but if they don't then just look up on a torrent website for a legitimate copy.
Also to compliment what Dark Scyth says I would have a look at this guide here: https://digiex.net/guides-reviews/g...ow-re-install-vista-without-recovery-dvd.html That should get your laptop formatted with a legit Version of Vista installed.
this will find the key on installed systems but make sure to find a vista iso that matches your installed version to work,i tried it with windows 7 and it worked perfectly if for some reason nutters program doesnt work try this CPP-ProductKeyFinder.exe