What's the best way to purge a hard drive of everything except the OS?

Format and reinstall is the easiest, and indeed the only method that I know of.
You could also put Ubuntu on it.
And there are programs that will over-write the entire drive with noise.

Degauss the hard-drive outside the the computer and re-load the OS.

Thanks @Nullo & @Tropical_Willie I was hoping there was a program I could run under Win XP to write white noise to everything outside its own files. But there’s all the registry entries and such. You’re right. Daguas and re-install the OS.

I would caution against degaussing a drive you intend to reuse. Modern hard drives store the info (unique to each drive) to control the servos that power the read head on the HD. If you erase that the drive is unusable.

Reinstalling is the easiest way to archive what you want @ETpro but it is a bit of pain, particularly with XP.

There’s Eraser, but that only works for individual files. Perhaps you can partition the OS and format everything else?

Since you want to keep the OS loaded

Right click on my computer
Properties
Advanced Tab
Advanced
User Profiles
Delete all but the administrator

This may take some time depending on how big the profiles are

Then go into c:\documents and settings\

and make sure the user profile folder actually deleted

Then

Right click on my computer
manage
local users and groups
users
manage
delete all but administrator

That should do the trick.. unless the person you are giving it to is a genius and knows how to recover that data

Otherewise reload…. but even then a genius can recover the data unless you user like boot and nuke or something.

I would just toss Ubuntu on it after nuking the drive. The people that get it can either use Ubuntu (which is very nice) or install whatever OS they want on it.

Factory resets are another option. Many computers in the last few years don’t have install discs, but they have a recovery partition that restores the PC to factory condition; no applications, no user data, no nada.

@mrlaconic It doesn’t take much tech-savvy to run Recuva, hence my habit of nuking partitions before dong a reset. Factory resets reformat the partition; deleting profiles merely deletes the pointers to a file while leaving the file intact unless/until overwritten. Granted, there are programs that erase free space and thus foilfd that type of thing as well, but it’s an extra step/hassle that I rarely bither with when I can just kill something with fire.

@johnpowell That is how two of the last three PCs I got rid of went out. The third had no hard drive at all. Ubuntu has the added bonus that it utterly changes the disc format as well, making recovery difficult even for trained professionals with expensive gear.

I seem to have lost any record of the password to it, so getting in as Admin is looking bleak.

@ETpro I think Admin has a default password. Not certain, tho.

@Nullo Turned out my user was Admin. It’s baen ages since I used the thing, or even used Win XP. Much to dredge out of the fog of time.

@Lightlyseared Thanks. I wouldn’t want to ruin the hard drive trying to save it.

@mrlaconic Just for safety sake, I did delete all users except Admin

@johnpowell & @jerv I’m going to put Ubuntu on it. The XP disc for it is an Upgrade dicc. I just want an OS on it so that someone can turn it on and confirm that it works. Like you say, they can put any OS they wish on it.

These days there are many utilities you can download off tech sites like Cnet, etc, that you can use to wipe a disk clean, but leave the OS and important related files. I don’t know if they still have it around or something better, but Partition Magic was good for that, if you wanted to partition a drive after the was formatted and the OS installed. This was years back and I would guess they have something even more robust now.

@Hypocrisy_Central Thanks. Glad to hear from you again. Where ya been?