I was just given a used laptop by my father which he recieved from his work. He told me that all i needed to do was figure out how to reconfigure it just to get all his work stuff off it. I have been asking around and doing a little internet search and can not figure out how to do it. I dont know if this is somthing i need to have a specialist do or if i can do it myself. Would someone please be able to help me with this? Thank you!

What do you mean reconfigure ??

Do you want to save your father's work and do your own things?? then you can just leave your father's profile as it is and make another user account by your name, login with that name and do what ever you wanna do.

Moving this thread to windows 2000/xp section as its not a tip or tweak.

i dont want to save all his stuff i want to get rid of everything he put on it. every program, everything he downloaded. i basically want it back to the basic windows like you would have when starting up a computer for the first time, nothing extra. perhaps reconfigure was the wrong term. i just didnt know if there was a specially process to getting rid of everything.

You'll have to uninstall every software that your father installed .. and you can delete your father's profile and make a username of your own to start a new shiny windows ... thats the basic cleaning I'm telling you.

or, my personal fave: format C: /u

<hehehehehe>

No, seriously. If you need to bering it back to the "new computer stage", I'd suggest you get your hands on the OS media and format the HD completely. Then, setup your OS afresh.

yes. if it came with a recovery disk try to get hold of it and restart the computer with it in the CD-rom drive

if it didn't you're best trying to get hold of a plain windows XP disk. i wouldnt buy a retail one maybe try ebay or something. no point spendin £200 on windows when you can get a new laptop with it installed for like £400

or, if you're feeling confident go to ubuntu.com