Computer Donation

How do you safely donate a computer to a person or organization when you've moved on in your technology needs?  How can you do so without putting your own digital information or identity at risk?  The difficulty in answering these questions keep many old computers sitting unused in closets.

While better than going to a landfill, there are uses that are better yet.  Job retraining facilities can use older machines for teaching purposes, running local applications for courses such as typing and basic computer skills.  Non profits can also use downlevel machines as dedicated kiosks they might otherwise not afford.  Whatever the use might be, something is better than nothing.  Let's get started with some how-to considerations.

The key is to remove personal information from the machine and any licensed software that you are not including in the donation (including original media, documentation and license).  Personal information not only includes information in email and files, also browser cache, cookies, history.

The easiest way to insure nothing is disclosed is to wipe the entire drive.  There are several utilities that will do this, including the popular Darik's Boot and Nuke.  Download the .iso, burn it to a CD (not as a file, as an image).  Insert the CD into the old machine and (you guessed it) - boot and nuke.

The downside to this is that the machine is now unusable without a reload of an operating system.  To reinstall on an older machine, find all necessary drivers, configure preferences, etc. can take some time.  The staff at your chosen ministry or nonprofit might not have the necessary skills or tools either.  It might be faster to do some selective deletion.  The suggestions below will provide some steps to get you started.

• Open the Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs then create a new user with administrative rights.
• Write the userid and password on a piece of tape and put it on the side of the machine.
• Logoff then logon with the new id
• Delete all other ids
• Open C:\Documents and Settings, delete all folders except All Users, Default User and the one you just created
• Open the Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs then delete as necessary
• Browse the Start menu for applications that may need to be deleted
• Open C:\Program Files, then look for any remaining applications for deletion
• Look for files off the root of C:\ such as \Temp, \Tmp etc that could be candidates for deletion
• Install CCleaner being sure to add the menu to the Recycle Bin
• Empty the Recycle Bin using secure delete
• Use CCleaner to wipe free space

I wrote this from memory as a precursor to helping a friend out this weekend.  I've been away from Windows support for a long time and wrote this as much to collect my thoughts as anything.  Suggestions on better or more current techniques are welcome.

In the meantime, it should help me and maybe some others.  Enjoy.