Laptop repair and browsing history...

[Hazel104]

Right my friend, yes truly is a friend ;-) has a poorly laptop that will not boot up, he wants to get it fixed but is worried about them seeing his browsing history, he has not downloaded anything. It’s normal naughty stuff, nothing bad but he is quite embarrassed about that sort of thing.

So would they be able to see his browsing history when fixing it? It may need a new hard drive or just XP reloading not sure.

[squarebear]

Yes they will be able to see it if they choose to look. They shouldn't need to look in his browser to fix a boot up problem but who can tell what they will do once it is up and running. I beleive Gary Glitter was caught out in the same way when he went to get his computer fixed.

[ChuckFickens]

Don't know because don't know what's wrong with it.

If it's a faulty hard drive then probably not, if it just needs windows reinstalled then probably not (unless they really make the effort to do so)

If the current install can be repaired then yes they can but only if they are able to login to the system (ie they would need his password)

that said, unless their is anything he needs to be worried about on the laptop don't worry about it, believe me when I say people that repair computers will have seen it all before.

[Hazel104]

Thats what i thought, thanks squarbear.

[squarebear]

I agree with Chuck. We have seen everything on people's laptops and unless it's something really nasty, they won't be interested.

[Hazel104]

That’s what I told him as well. It’s just its someone I work with fixing it and he has met him - I think he is being a bit precious about it tbh.

Thank you both.

[jomifl]

Get a new laptop and be good. Alternatively. If the hard drive is ok it should be possible to take it out ( quite easy) and fit it in a hard drive interface and delete the embarrasing files via another computer but only if the owner of the other computer doesn't mind anybody having access to his browsing history....

[TTG]

Can the laptop boot into safe mode? If it can, schedule a chkdsk /r

If that fails try system restore.

[Hazel104]

Hi
no it can not reboot in safe mode and he tried the restore, tbh it is a little beyond me and def beyond him, we're both a bit useless at this sort of thing!
My college has taken home to look at over the weekend ;-)
Thank you anyway TTG.

[AlBags]

Just use something like Tracks Eraser. It scrubs everything and has a shredder.