Laptop refresh help (1 Viewer)

[bp1]

Hey, everyone. I couldn't find this exact topic/discussion via search, so I apologize if this is repetitive.

My wife was let go from her job and the company has allowed her to keep one of the two laptops she was given over the years. I plan on using it as a personal computer now and was wondering what my next steps should be to remove the Admin account and everything attached to that. I checked online and there are many different suggestions, but I wanted to see if anyone here has actually done this. I'm guessing we basically would need to remove everything and start from scratch...or is there a better/easier solution? Thanks!!

 

[3C's]

You could certainly clean it up/remove stuff you don't want but the cleanest path would be to reinstall the OS. Good chance there's a factory refresh partition on it you can boot from to reinstall. Before doing that I would make note of the license key. If it's not actually on a sticker on the outside you can get a program like magical jelly bean keyfinder to extract the key before wiping out the OS.

 

[belljr]

You could certainly clean it up/remove stuff you don't want but the cleanest path would be to reinstall the OS. Good chance there's a factory refresh partition on it you can boot from to reinstall. Before doing that I would make note of the license key. If it's not actually on a sticker on the outside you can get a program like magical jelly bean keyfinder to extract the key before wiping out the OS.

II think this will depend on how the company set it up. We create our own images here so I'm pretty sure the partition is our image not out of the box OS.

I could be wrong but I think that;s how it is. So if I kept my current laptop I would need to start from scratch

 

[3C's]

You could certainly clean it up/remove stuff you don't want but the cleanest path would be to reinstall the OS. Good chance there's a factory refresh partition on it you can boot from to reinstall. Before doing that I would make note of the license key. If it's not actually on a sticker on the outside you can get a program like magical jelly bean keyfinder to extract the key before wiping out the OS.

II think this will depend on how the company set it up. We create our own images here so I'm pretty sure the partition is our image not out of the box OS.

I could be wrong but I think that;s how it is. So if I kept my current laptop I would need to start from scratch

True, ours does the same. Bigger company; smaller ones might not. What I did on one I kept was I got the/a license key and downloaded the Windows install image from MS. Could also go the Linux route.

 

[Sullie]

I would rip and replace the hard drive, NVMe if it allows for one or SSD (solid state drive) otherwise and you should have a digital license key for the O/S (assuming it was Windows 10 or 11) and here's a step by step on how that works. After that make sure to patch the o/s with the latest patches. And then I would install something like BitDefender to protect it and then go to the manufacturer's website and apply all the latest patches, drivers, firmware, etc.

 

[3C's]

I would rip and replace the hard drive, NVMe if it allows for one or SSD (solid state drive) otherwise and you should have a digital license key for the O/S (assuming it was Windows 10 or 11) and here's a step by step on how that works. After that make sure to patch the o/s with the latest patches. And then I would install something like BitDefender to protect it and then go to the manufacturer's website and apply all the latest patches, drivers, firmware, etc.

I haven't seen a work laptop w/o an SSD for at least 3 cycles so it probably came with one.

 

[Sullie]

I would rip and replace the hard drive, NVMe if it allows for one or SSD (solid state drive) otherwise and you should have a digital license key for the O/S (assuming it was Windows 10 or 11) and here's a step by step on how that works. After that make sure to patch the o/s with the latest patches. And then I would install something like BitDefender to protect it and then go to the manufacturer's website and apply all the latest patches, drivers, firmware, etc.

I haven't seen a work laptop w/o an SSD for at least 3 cycles so it probably came with one.

Agreed but I'm saying if it has an SSD, I would replace it with an NVMe drive if the laptop allows for an NVMe and even if it came with an SSD and you can't run an NVMe drive, I would still replace it with a newer, higher capacity SSD so that you're starting with a brand new, fresh, clean drive. It's cheap and easy to replace and you don't have to worry about using an old drive.