Omega Owners Forum

Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: omegod on 07 September 2013, 09:45:50

Title: Old laptops
Post by: omegod on 07 September 2013, 09:45:50

I have 3 old work laptops that I have legitimately kept when upgraded etc and due to the way they are configured, all have citrix installed and I don't have administrator passwords so they are pretty much useless as I can't install anything. Is it possible to get one of them wiped somehow ?

Title: Re: Old laptops
Post by: AndyRoid on 07 September 2013, 09:52:19

Do the laptops have optical drives?

If so, just boot from whatever CD/DVD of the operating system you want to install and wipe it from there.

Title: Re: Old laptops
Post by: tunnie on 07 September 2013, 09:56:44

As Andy says, get a copy of Windoze on CD and boot from that, check BIOS too, it maybe able to boot from USB as well. So you can put something on a stick drive to boot off  :y

Title: Re: Old laptops
Post by: bigegg on 07 September 2013, 10:13:52

If the above doesn't work, you can get a 2.5">3.5" hard disc adaptor so you can remove the HD from the laptops, install them in a desktop PC and wipe and install from there.
If you do a full install (of XP -don't know about others) including installation files, then when you plug the HD back into the lappy, it will auto install any additional drivers automatically.

However: many lappys need special drivers, usually for network,sound and USB - you should download those whilst the HD is in the desktop - just onto the HD, don't install them until the HD is in the laptop.

Title: Re: Old laptops
Post by: Andy H on 07 September 2013, 10:19:20

I would expect that the organisation that set an admin password for citrix would also have set an admin password for the BIOS to prevent booting from CD, USB or network :-\

If the BIOS is password protected then you could take the disk out and install a bootloader in a machine you do have admin rights for or you may be able to find a way to clear the BIOS password.

note to self - must type faster ::)

Title: Re: Old laptops
Post by: TheBoy on 07 September 2013, 10:45:29

If these are ex-work ones, probably most of the software is illegal, due to the way its probably been licenced.

Software like pdwipe can do a proper wipe of the drive, if they are to be disposed of. If you want to keep them, reinstall windows with your own licenced copies.


Plenty of other ways if you want to keep the software on there, but as the licences are most likely invalid, not for discussion here