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HI, have an ex-work laptop which I now want to use as home machine. I'm guessing that if I wipe the hard drive a load a fresh copy of windows all the limitations of use will be removed?? Is there an easier solution? Thanks
Depends. We used to have the BIOS locked down too.
Hmmm... that was my concern...
That's probably the best solution.
Or you could uninstall everything you don't need, run ccleaner on it, defrag it & then see how much RAM it will take & put in as much as you can, if it's not already there.
Oh, and don't run Norton or McAfee on it. Download Microsoft Security Essentials & use that. Was recommended to me when I asked questions about a new laptop on here & I have found it great.
If it's come from a work domain, I'd almost certainly flatten it. Hit the internets to see if there's any sort of 'factory reset' reload procedure built in for that model, that'll be by far your easiest route (unless IT have removed it). Then Windows Update it to death before you do anything else.
If it's been properly removed from the domain then it may be salvageable without wiping. If it's just been a case of "here, we don't want this any more, take it" then it'll most likely still have Group Policies applied to it, which can be more trouble than they're worth to remove manually.
You may find the work copy of Windows is under an enterprise license, not sure where that would leave you if you run Windows update and it tries to run the "genuine Windows" test. I'd go with the fresh install if you can, or maybe try a Win8 upgrade while it's cheap.
Edit: although thinking about it an upgrade would also run the genuine Windows test so that might also not work!
Before you do anything, check that it is actually on a domain. Some companies I've worked on don't use domains for laptops. if not on a domain, you just need an admin password reset disk or usb key - dead easy to do (google it).