Because they requested the entire laptop otherwise it voids my warranty. I have information on my ESE kids (reports, names, socials for their IEPs and other identifying information) and by law, I have to protect that information or I can be charged with violating these students privacy.

Patrick,

Call Gateway back and tell them what you wrote here and see if they will make an exception. They don't need your hard drive to fix/replace the screen.

j razz

I suppose I could always run an unattended install of vista and have it auto format and reinstall vista.

I told them that last night, the tech rep said that for them to service my laptop under warranty, they need all original parts returned as it may not just be an LCD issue and could be another defective part. I dont see how but at least they are doing it for free so I wasnt going to complain.

I don't know of any boot/shred utility that works upon bootup.

However, I think what Terje was suggesting -- and I would suggest as well -- is to remove the drive and then attach it to a working computer. You can get a cable for just a few dollars that will adapt a 2.5" drive to 3.5" drive. With that, you can either mount it into an external USB or FIrewire enclosure, or just mount it as a slave in an existing computer. Then, if you don't need anything on it, you can use any of hundreds of utilities which will wipe deleted files, or if you don't need anything on the drive, will completely delete everything by overwriting every sector with 1's or 0's.

Another possibility is to simply attach an external monitor. Four years ago, I had to recover the contents from a badly damaged laptop whose screen was destroyed from an extremely bad accident. Amazingly, the laptop drive and electronics were still intact, and I was able to boot using an external monitor and simply offload the files I wanted using a network connection.

John, excellent idea. I never thought about connecting to my monitor. Kudos!!!

Do I have to do anything extra after connecting the laptop to an external monitor or is it automatically detected and displayed?

tried hooking it up to my LCD monitor and got nothing. Grrr. Ill figure something out. thanks anyway.

BOOTitNG

It's a multiple tool disk. Download it and put it on a cd. It's self booting and comes with drive wipe capability.

It's not free but it does come with a full 30 day working trial. Boot up with it and when it asks to install hit cancel and you will then go into maintenance mode where you will find the disk format/wipe/partition tools.

It works with mouse or with arrow keys so I can probably walk you blind through it.

BTW.... it also has disk imaging capability. It's about the best little program I have ever owned.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm

Of course the other thing you can do is remove the HDD and temporarily pop it into another laptop, do your thing and then reinstall it.

Usually there is a function key combo that toggles the display from the LCD to external monitor. Check the alternate colored symbols on your keyboard, most of the laptops the past 5-10 years have had them. Press a Fn (function) key, then the key that looks like a monitor screen.

The manual should say, or look for a manual online.

Usually there is a function key combo that toggles the display from the LCD to external monitor. Yes, you almost always have to do this, although it varies from laptop to laptop: some automatically detect the external monitor, but others require you to manually toggle. If you have the monitor connector on the back of your laptop, I can almost guarantee it will work if you use the function key/monitor toggle.

Each press of the "monitor key" button will probably change you from laptop screen only; external monitor only; and laptop AND external monitor simultaneously. Some laptops also have a fourth mode which is both monitors off (for blanking during a presentation, for example).

Just about every laptop I've used uses the F5 key to enable the external monitor. Press Fn and F5.

Also, you may want to get one of these USB hard drive adaptors. Not expensive and really useful:

http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/SearchDetail.asp?productID=13779&curpage=1

from what I understand, that's why you need a private tech to handle your equipment that's under the same restrictions as you.

Basically, destroy the laptop & get a new one. Those laws are so picky & restrictions there's nothing else to do. My wife told me I can't work on her computer for similar reasons, she'd need to hire someone. I said that someone would have the same access I would & could look at anything, so what's the point?

I'm assuming you're with a school district. Honestly, dump it on them. They're part of the system, it should be their problem (main reason you shouldn't be using your own laptop for stuff like this).

You are already be in violation of Federal and State laws if you have unencrypted social security numbers on you laptop. I can't imagine that your school doesn't know this. Every major college has these protection policies posted on their web sites. You can find tons of them by doing a simple Google search in "federal law ssn storage". Most are quickly moving away from using the SSN in college databases.

Had you encrypted them as required by law, you would not be in the predicament today. I would seriously consult the security people at your school and ask them what to do. This is a serious violation that could get your school in a lot of trouble. I would make them aware and seek their help. This is not your problem if they gave you a program to use that stores SSN's unencrypted. Let them help you fix it.

~jr

sorry, meant to say student id numbers, not social security numbers. Nonetheless, point well taken. I am sure we will get this taken care of. Thanks for all the suggestions.

I swtiched out the hard drive. Issue has been resolved. Thanks.

Glad you got the issue resolved.

For future reference, a great tool is the Ultimate Boot CD:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It's a bootable CD of several categories of sytem/disk utilities. One of the categories is Hard Disk wiping tools.

They'll perform multiple low-level formats of the drive to make it as unrecoverable as possible (at least by NSA standards). Keep in mind, this process can take a LONG time (relative to the size of the HD).