How Do I Wipe A Drive Clean From A Work Computer?

I have a computer I got from work that I can keep and I want to wipe the drive completely clean and turn it into a personal computer. Its a HP desktop computer with windows 7 professional running on it. I already have a chromebook uploaded to a usb stick that Ive used to reprogram one of my other computers, and when I try to do it on this one, the boot screen wont let me do it. There are all sorts of security setting applied and I cant delete or install certain things on here. I just want to wipe the drive clean. How can I do this? I do not have the windows 7 install cd either. Is there a way to do this??

 

The only reason to "wipe" a disk clean is to prevent bad guys from recovering your data. Understand "wipe" is a term to mean a bunch of random 1s and 0s are written to the disk so any previously saved data cannot be recovered with any file recovery or unerase programs.

Does this computer boot? If so, then just uninstall what you don't want. Delete any old personal files. If this is not going to be a boot disk, then you can just format the drive and this will erase/delete everything on it.

Note you should have been given all the disks with that computer. You may have to buy a new Windows license to be legal.

 

A few tips and ways on making your own '7 disk

http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Recovery-Disc-in-Windows-7

But as Digerati said can you just delete and secure erase any company programs and data?

 

Windows images for DVD burning:

https://1drv.ms/f/s!Aus47WpmlzFPgSpTAMgwUz11pB1y

It bears mentioning that she may be running into BIOS settings. This machine may be running a proxy server image.

 

If she can boot to CD, she can use MiniTool Partition Wizard bootable CD (choose architecture first and burn to CD) to wipe the drive, then download the Win 7 ISO and purchase a Key for around $35US. Of course, if there's a BIOS password set, she'd need to get it from her place of employment.

 

My company keeps the drives, people just buy an SSD.

 

Yeah, what company lets you take a computer with their data?? And with the "all sorts of security setting applied.."

 

Does this machine look for a "PXE-ROM" at startup?

 

Not as uncommon as you might think. Any larger company with a real IT person on staff will surely clean up the computer before letting it go. But many smaller companies with a business that has nothing to do with computers see their computers just as many normal users do - as tools or appliances that should just work like their microwave oven or toaster. And when they break, they just replace them without a thought about protecting the data. Their goal is to get back to work as fast as possible. If security were as common sense as many of us feel it should be, the bad guys would not be enjoying the great success that they do.

 

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01867418/
This gives you a chance , if there is a recovery partition on there - I have had some from companies that did.
If it has the recovery partition you will not need a disc, or, a coa, as it will install as factory.