Clean installation; Windows OEM, retrieve installation key, military format and reinstall

[kiddingguy]

I'm thinking of giving away an old Windows 10 Toshiba notebook to charity.

However, I don't feel comfortable to just reinstall Windows Home (and delete the partition/harddisk).

Is there a way to obtain the installation OEM-key, do a military format of the HDD and reinstall Windows with the retrieved OEM-key (I guess I from from a Windows 100downloaded version from Microsoft itself).

Or, will a Windows installation after a military format do, and based on the hardware ID etc Windows/Microsoft auto-detects it's a previous setup with a reinstalled Windows 10 installation.

Or... do you guys have a better way for this?

 

In previous situations I tried solutions like this (e.g. OA3xOriginalProductKey), but during re-installation the obtained key didn't work. And I had to buy a new Windows-key. This is something I would like to prevent.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

There's no such thing as a military format. If the military, or a company contracted to a government, plan to get rid of a harddrive they go at it with sledgehammers and pass the remains to a designated disposal site.

But a full format and reinstall should suffice. If you're that worried about someone trying to get previous data, buy a replacement hard drive or just donate the computer without the hard drive.

[kiddingguy]

Or secure wiping… might be the better formulation of this term.

[theefool]

Or a degausser:  https://www.mediaduplicationsystems.com/sd-1-hard-drive-magnetic-media-tape-degausser

 

 

[C:Amie]

I think that what you are thinking of is a DoD multi-pass wipe. If it is a rotational hard drive, you can use something like DBAN or ShredOS to perform a multi-pass surface-level erase. It will take a long time.

If the machine has an SSD, this is not a good idea as it will artificially limit the life-span of the drive, in this case, if the drive has a self-secure erase, it is best to use that. something like GParted or Parted Magic (or the SSD manufacturers own tools e.g. Samsung magician) might help here. Finally, if the machine is new enough to be properly aware of SSD's, it might have an option to execute the secure erase within the UEFI. SSD secure erase usually revolves around destroying the drives internal encryption key and then trimming down the drive, rather than a sector-by-sector erase as with magentic storage.

On the OEM key, usually, the "key" is stored in the machine firmware, so it won't be much use to you to keep and in turn, if you clean install Windows, it will just self-activate based on finding the "key" in ROM. If you are really worried, backup the OS using CloneZilla or find a different HDD, do a test reinstall and see if it will activate on its own. As you say it is a Toshiba, and they are a large OEM, I suspect you'll find that it will just self-activate with no problems.

[kiddingguy]

On 26/05/2024 at 15:24, C:Amie said:

I think that what you are thinking of is a DoD multi-pass wipe. If it is a rotational hard drive, you can use something like DBAN or ShredOS to perform a multi-pass surface-level erase. It will take a long time.

If the machine has an SSD, this is not a good idea as it will artificially limit the life-span of the drive, in this case, if the drive has a self-secure erase, it is best to use that. something like GParted or Parted Magic (or the SSD manufacturers own tools e.g. Samsung magician) might help here. Finally, if the machine is new enough to be properly aware of SSD's, it might have an option to execute the secure erase within the UEFI. SSD secure erase usually revolves around destroying the drives internal encryption key and then trimming down the drive, rather than a sector-by-sector erase as with magentic storage.

On the OEM key, usually, the "key" is stored in the machine firmware, so it won't be much use to you to keep and in turn, if you clean install Windows, it will just self-activate based on finding the "key" in ROM. If you are really worried, backup the OS using CloneZilla or find a different HDD, do a test reinstall and see if it will activate on its own. As you say it is a Toshiba, and they are a large OEM, I suspect you'll find that it will just self-activate with no problems.

Great. Thx.

I also read that a full format from within installation will also do the trick, and that data cannot easily be restored/found back.

[C:Amie]

On 26/05/2024 at 20:58, kiddingguy said:

Great. Thx.

I also read that a full format from within installation will also do the trick, and that data cannot easily be restored/found back.

Format from within the installation? You can't format the drive that the OS is running on. You can format the drive from the installation media, but this clears the partition table and does not perform any sector-by-sector clearing on a rotational HDD, thus the data could be recoverable by someone with enough knowledge*.

The only way to attempt to clear the drive while the OS is running on it would be to repeatedly write binary flack over the free space or full disk encrypt it, but this would potentially leave holes in recoverability (someone would have to be super determined at this point and you be a high value target to bother, but still, it is just a bad way to do it given the choice).

* Unless the drive is fully, full disk encrypted.

[kiddingguy]

On 26/05/2024 at 23:00, C:Amie said:

Format from within the installation? You can't format the drive that the OS is running on. You can format the drive from the installation media, but this clears the partition table and does not perform any sector-by-sector clearing on a rotational HDD, thus the data could be recoverable by someone with enough knowledge*.

The only way to attempt to clear the drive while the OS is running on it would be to repeatedly write binary flack over the free space or full disk encrypt it, but this would potentially leave holes in recoverability (someone would have to be super determined at this point and you be a high value target to bother, but still, it is just a bad way to do it given the choice).

* Unless the drive is fully, full disk encrypted.

I know that. So hence the reinstall from within Windows (based on the hidden (Windows partition). And during this setup opt for the full format.
Or wipe the harddisk thoroughly via third party software, and install from a downloaded Windows iso from Microsoft's site. And hoping for the self-activation [because sometimes the legit retrieved key didn't work]

[Gerowen]

Personally I would just restore the factory image and maybe do a wipe of the free space with something like Bleachbit or CCleaner.

DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) is pretty cool, I've used it once or twice before.  Another one I've heard of and that I think will even print fancy little certificates for you is Active Killdisk.  But as somebody who used to work in the military, we never did a "military wipe".  Rarely we did wipe devices after an exercise or something, but even then the drives were only ever used with data of the appropriate classification (secret drives stayed secret, etc.).  Storage devices basically always stayed with us until they were no longer useful and then we got to play with our "user trainer".

[C:Amie]

On 27/05/2024 at 07:17, kiddingguy said:

I know that. So hence the reinstall from within Windows (based on the hidden (Windows partition). And during this setup opt for the full format.
Or wipe the harddisk thoroughly via third party software, and install from a downloaded Windows iso from Microsoft's site. And hoping for the self-activation [because sometimes the legit retrieved key didn't work]

If it is a Windows 7/8 key, you might have an issue activating to 10 regardless, but for a Toshiba, unless you had the motherboard replaced at some point, it should be fine - as said, if you have a spare HDD kicking around, give it a try.

 

If you are making a USD drive up anyway, I'd suggest forgetting about the Windows installer and make up a ShredOS bootable key and use that. It really depends upon how sensitive the data is that you need to protect as to whether it is worth your time. If the answer is that it is sensitive, then I, personally, wouldn't even contemplate the format button on the installer media.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Did the Toshiba notebook originally ship from the manufacturer with Windows 10 pre-installed on it?  If so, the Product ID Key for its operating system should be embedded in its firmware.  You can verify this by opening an elevated Command Prompt (filename: CMD.EXE) and issuing a

WMIC path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

command.  Keep in mind that if you installed a different edition of Windows 10 than what is licensed by the product key in the firmware (like Windows 10 Pro on a computer with an embedded license for Windows 10 Home), you'll need to reinstall that original edition of Windows 10 with they key.

If that does not return anything, than Windows 10 was likely activated manually after installation.  You can try running a program like Nirsoft's ProduKey or Magical Jelly Bean's Keyfinder (or both) to see if either identifies a valid Windows 10 Product ID key.

As far as wiping the Toshiba laptop's internal drive goes, you may wish to see if Toshiba offers some kind of utility to securely wipe the laptop's internal drive--often there is a bootable image that can be written to a CD or USB flash drive for this purpose.  If the laptop has a non-Toshiba drive in it, check with its manufacturer to see if they offer a bootable tool to perform a wipe.  Failing that, you could use a tool like DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) or LSoft Technologies' KillDisk to wipe the drive (note that DBAN is not recommended for SSDs due to the way in which it works).  Another option is Parted Magic, but that's a commercial program.

Once the machine has a blank drive, you can (re)install Windows  10 on it.  If possible, I would suggest using Toshiba's own factory recover media for this, so that it installs any machine-specific drivers, software and settings on it.  Given that it is an old laptop, it may have several rounds of operating system and driver and software updates ahead of it, which might take some time to complete.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky