what to do now?

[unlovedwarrior]

lol... sometimes other ppl answer confuse you so you just need to find the answer for yourself..

[scott_morton70]

so if i keep the stolen one, how do i protect myself?  rest the bios?  rest the mac address?  any ideas?

[unlovedwarrior]

i dont know umm try taking the internal battery out for a min or two that should reset the bios.. but what for what one of the experts has to say on my advise.. before you do anything i suggest.. cuz im not an expert

[Nitro]

Depends if its 64 bit or not, Athlon xp's have been out for years.

What Athlon XP ran at 2.2 GHZ that would be in a business class machine? Dell doesn't use AMD anyway.  

 [smiley=laugh.gif]

Fair point, Although its not a business class machine Alienware have been running athlons  

[Nitro]

is it a new HDD?

If its not and its the original one, unless its been wiped properly then there could be traces of whoever had it before.

[unlovedwarrior]

sooo REFORMAT

[GX1_Man]

so if i keep the stolen one, how do i protect myself?  rest the bios?  rest the mac address?  any ideas?

Rest your guilty conscience I guess. How ever you need to do that.

[Nitro]

sooo REFORMAT

Reformatting doesn't always get rid of everything, Its why people always say never to buy a refurbished/second hand hard drive.

[unlovedwarrior]

then how do you get rid of everything? so the computer is like brand new? :-?

cuz i would like to know..

[Nitro]

I don't ever buy second hand drives and keep my drives till the end and even when my drives pack up i destroy the disk, With I.d theft  on the increase its just not worth the risk.

A quick google found this article : http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,110338,00.asp

[dl65]

scott_morton70...... I have been following this thread out of curiousity .
First , you say you bought this ...... from a friend of a friend , who knows this guy ........ BEEEEEEEEEPPPPP 1st clue that perhaps somethings wrong .

2nd clue ........... Selling it for a major corporation ........... and it still had the operating system installed and all the programs ......... BEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPP
When companies dispose of unwanted computers , they will quite often remove the hard drive or at the very least wipe it clean.

So what to do ?    If you are really concerned , you should contact your local police office and explain it to them . Be prepared to provide them with the service tag number ( it's a Dell I think you said ) as well as the model number. They should be able to trace it back to the original owner and if in fact they did dispose of it as you outlined , they ( the local police ) will be able to tell you .  Until you find out if the sale was legit , I wouldn't do anything with it ......... If it turns out to be ok ...... then go out and purchase a new copy of windows XP and do a full format and install.

I trust this will help you sleep better tonight .

dl65  

[scott_morton70]

dl65, all is correct as mentioned above.  it might be a good idea to contact the authorities.  then reformat the HD.  i've planned to put a new HD on all along.

as for your BEEEEPS....i understand what you're saying, but these days, with so many computers being sold and outdated so fast, i really didn't think anything of it?  but as one looks back, it's easy to postulate in hindsight.

[GX1_Man]

And even more importantly it did not only come with an operating system, but an illegal (according to Microsoft) one at that. Even bigger BEEEEP. Large corporations don't use pirated software, and I'll bet this was a reasonable fresh load. Just check the dates for the files in the Windows folder.  

[unlovedwarrior]

this just keeps getting worse and worse every post