Hardware & Technical Thinking on W10

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
An issue has arisen. I have recently bought a new Laptop because the old one simply wasn't up to running W10 reliably.

I want to give the old Laptop away and naturally, want to remove personal information. The log in includes an important email address.

Now I've asked someone in the know and been pointed to these pages:

http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5374-local-account-switch-windows-10-a.html

http://www.howtogeek.com/227763/how-to-completely-delete-your-microsoft-account/

It seems, by turning off the M$ account I will loose Windows Store, XBox, One Drive, Various syncs and so on. That much I really like. These services use up bandwidth and are to blame for the claims of spying associated with W10.

It will also mean I can log into W10 without having to enter the 1234 password every time. Another plus.

But since I am using the same M$ account with the new laptop, I can't risk deleting the M$ account since I will loose it also on the new laptop.

It does suggest it may be a good idea, when installing W10 to set up an account with M$ using a dummy email account. That way, apps can be loaded if necessary then w10 switched to a local account after.
 

Porina

Porina
There are two things in that 2nd link, and you don't have to do both of them. If I understand correctly, you only want to remove the account from the old laptop, not delete the online account also. So on the old laptop, create a totally new local user login with admin rights, switch to that, and remove the MS login from that laptop only. It wont affect other logins. No need to deactivate the actual account at MS if you want to keep using it.

If you don't need or want to keep software on the old laptop either, then it may be better to do a full Windows 10 restore to bring it back to factory fresh feeling.

It also depends on the levels of paranoia about what traces you might have left even if you have removed your login. Might there be clues or left over files elsewhere of your past activity? I recently sold a Windows 7 PC, and while removing my login was easy, it was more time consuming manually sifting through programs and the registry to remove old traces. I didn't want to do a clean install as there was a lot of software that could remain while sold. After any cleanup, I'd suggest running ccleaner with the "wipe unused disk space" option to make sure nothing can be undeleted easily.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Porina said:
If you don't need or want to keep software on the old laptop either, then it may be better to do a full Windows 10 restore to bring it back to factory fresh feeling.
Click to expand...

Definitely +1 on this!

If there's software installed that you want the new owner to keep, as suggested make a new local admin account and delete your old C:\Users profile and get rid of the regkey in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\*youroldprofile*
 

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
Porina said:
There are two things in that 2nd link, and you don't have to do both of them. If I understand correctly, you only want to remove the account from the old laptop, not delete the online account also. So on the old laptop, create a totally new local user login with admin rights, switch to that, and remove the MS login from that laptop only. It wont affect other logins. No need to deactivate the actual account at MS if you want to keep using it.

If you don't need or want to keep software on the old laptop either, then it may be better to do a full Windows 10 restore to bring it back to factory fresh feeling.

It also depends on the levels of paranoia about what traces you might have left even if you have removed your login. Might there be clues or left over files elsewhere of your past activity? I recently sold a Windows 7 PC, and while removing my login was easy, it was more time consuming manually sifting through programs and the registry to remove old traces. I didn't want to do a clean install as there was a lot of software that could remain while sold. After any cleanup, I'd suggest running ccleaner with the "wipe unused disk space" option to make sure nothing can be undeleted easily.
Click to expand...

These points are not the issue.

The issue is the existing log in information and the automatic connection to several M$ services which many will not be using.

I didn't realise how to remove this until it was pointed out. I am passing this on. It is appreciated that you already knew and for that I'm sure everyone will once again, be suitably impressed.

It is up to the next owner to create his own account.

As for a re-install, that is frankly a waste of time. I must confess that for someone who has taken so much trouble to demonstrate how knowledgeable you are, it is surprising, (though perhaps not) that you didn't realise this. A quick download of something such as Advanced Systemcare9 and click on the Undelete function, will recover most of the old files from a reformat/re-install.

Advanced Systemcare9 also has a rather good scrub function to remove all traces of important documents. Hardly paranoia, rather common sense. Personal addresses, photographs, log in formation, bank details. Then again, these are mostly matters that concern adults.

The subject is removal of user log in, allowing easier Windows startup plus stopping further automatic log in to various M$ services which most of us won't be using anyway.



Asp Explorer said:
Definitely +1 on this!

If there's software installed that you want the new owner to keep, as suggested make a new local admin account and delete your old C:\Users profile and get rid of the regkey in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\*youroldprofile*
Click to expand...

Thank you for the additional suggestions relating to the two user profile points.
 
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