Re: Preparing PCs for charity use?


"Andy Hewitt" <wildrover.andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1i8i8dw.1eso52015nc5g0N%wildrover.andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I know, but I reckon I'll get better answers here.

I've taken on the task of dealing with a heap of PCs that were left at
my sister's church. They ain't good, but would be OK for a little bit of
word processing or Emailing.

They have Win XP on them already, but some are really not up to that
task - four of these are slowish (around 700MHz) Celeron's with XP Pro
on them. My plan is to swap the RAM and drives around to make up a
couple of half decent machines, maybe three.

I need to wipe these really, and reinstall from fresh, as some of these
have come from a school, and still have their data on them. Trouble is,
they also don't have the install discs either, and I don't have any
Windows software myself.

My thought is to bung Win 2000 on them.

That will work. You may have some trouble finding all the right drivers for
your hardware. W2k licenses do not require M$ authentication, so you can
use the same one for all the machines. There are different versions about -
so make sure the disk and its license are a compatible pair.

Conversely, if the machines have the MS license stickers on them, you may be
able to re-install XP from scratch. It is likely that the licensing for a
school was some corporate version; so you need to find a similar corporately
licensed disk to work from. Very likely single OEM licenses will not work

You might find it possible to remove only the user data. To do this
properly requires some detailed Windows knowledge. I suspect the school is
in breach of the Data Protection law if it hasn't removed all trace of its
(i.e. pupils') files - you might care to suggest that they fund the cost of
somebody suitably skilled to do this. That said, most old Windows machines
are so corrupt that it would be better to re-install from scratch.

Whatever, set the machines up with an Administrator account and strong
password, then add users with only "Limited" accounts - also with passwords.
W2k does allow fine control over security, so it is worth setting out to
protect users against their own incompetence. Again, some significant
Windows knowledge would help. And install trustworthy AV.

Make sure any internet connection is via a properly configured router.

--
Graham J




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