How to wreck XP very quickly ?

[mcquiggd]

Erm, says the 'professional' who wants advice on how to wipe her inappropriate information stored on a client's machine(s)... ?

[Sockpuppet]

Haven't you ever worked on a major project or you just never justifed an extension? If you prefer to bounce between small-time bits of odd-job coding on the periphery of the real action then please yourself but don't be bitter.

As long as the cash is there bit jobs are ok by me.

[vetran]

Depends what info, have you got admin access?

If you are insecure then start now.

in XP (well almost all windows variants) the info is spread everywhere. Obviously the various temp directories, the Doc & settings directory, recycle, MRU, appdata and the system restore are good candidates. However if you clean all those carefully and do a decent defrag they may think you were just tidy and did little private stuff on the PC.

However if they want to look and they are any good they will be able to find something.

The trick is to look cleanish i.e. a couple of mails from your partner about dinner, dog to the vets etc. then they will just back it up, wipe it and use it again. If you are too clean they will get suspicious (I would).

Don't, unless you have been a very bad girl, start wiping their machines as they will probably start looking through internet, mail & proxy logs and find it anyway, plus have you for vandalising their machine. Remember if the company is largeish HR will probably have rules about access to people's email, they may need to show reasonable cause before delving into message logs etc.

if you must wipe it, killdisk & Dirk Boot & Nuke (DBAN) seem to work OK, boot from floppy / CD.

avoid doing anything interesting on employers / clients PC's.

[TheMonkey]

Thermite is the answer!

[MarillionFan]

More than 2 years on one project is considered Perm. Not by me, but by the IR.

I can see why you're going out the door though.

You are that 'life owes me a living' bint from the BBC and I claim by crisp £5.

[sparklelard]

Thermite is the answer!

Plus a good cup of water to activate it!

[Mordac]

I've got the feeling I'm going to be given the flick at my place soon. Which wouldn't be so bad as I've had enough anyway. The incompetence is something else.

If I'm given the heave-ho I would really expect to be given a couple of weeks notice but if I was given rather less: how would I wreck my XP desktop installations so all private / non-corporate info would remain out of their view ?

Ideally I'd re-image the machines but there may not be time.

Is there any quick batchfile or deletion that would zap the PCs? I'm thinking altering/deleting ntldr/boot.ini etc and hitting restart might do the trick ?

Yes it will work, but it's deeply unprofessional. Don't be surprised if they slag you off when asked for a reference. I would.

[Flubster]

I'm not a PC bod, but can't you go to DOS and type something like:

format c:

That should do it...

[Ardesco]

I'm not a PC bod, but can't you go to DOS and type something like:

format c:

That should do it...

Recoverable by somebody who knows what they are doing unless you write new data over the entire disk.

(That being said I can't belive they would bother recovering data from an HD unless (they thought) you were doing something dodgy and they were looking for evidence)

HTH

[Angela_D]

I'm not doing anything dodgy.

It is company policy to re-image a PC when no longer used anyway. BUT I know the tech colleagues would probably have a nose around for their own satisfaction, not because of any official investigation.