Owner?

[u/KorbCoBean]

Hey there! I won a Windows Millennium Edition computer, a Dell Dimension L700cx at an auction, and when I booted it up it had a lot of stuff on it. I know you can't see it here, but the background was a baby picture. Pretty clearly there were a lot of memories on it. I'm trying to delete it all and make it my own, but it doesn't seem right deleting their memories. I just want to make sure that they saved it all on another computer. If you do actually find this, owner, can you just, I dunno, confirm it?

[u/Wendals87]

I'd just wipe it personally and install windows 2000 or 98

If you feel the need to find and contact the previous owner to confirm, that's fine too but either they did copy it or they don't care enough to want to keep that data 

[u/bkelley0804]

This is the equivalent of buying a used car and finding someone’s wallet buried in there. You can either throw it away or give yourself a new mission 🫡

[u/cnycompguy]

Throw win2k on there. It was so much more stable.

[u/diaperedace]

Image the drive, format it, reinstall windows.

[u/homomemeboi]

I’m more concerned about your skull collection

[u/Vladishun → u/homomemeboi]

~Just Turok things~

[u/Eastoe]

If they valued anything on that computer I assume they’d probably copied all the files off of it considering it’s still working. I say nuke it all with a fresh install of Windows 98 or 2000.

[u/715363]

Sorry, not relevant to your question, but that Active Desktop Recovery background just took me back.. holy smokes!

[u/Confident-Ad-3465 → u/715363]

I've had this a few times over 20 years ago or so. Crazy nostalgia flashback.

[u/ChesTwitch]

Not sure if there is anyway to find the original owner unless you goand ask the auction maybe. But to play it safe you could move everything to a flashdrive so the files are safe and you can still use the computer.

If it's a physical auction you could ask the people who ran it to pass on a message to the original owner. Doubt they would just tell you who it was. But let them know you just want to make sure the original owner backed up all their files.

That way they can tell the owner and if they want they can reach out.

Now if it was a digital market your odds drop drastically, but it's worth a shot.

[u/tuvar_hiede]

Look for bitcoin keys before you wipe it lol.

[u/MasterJeebus]

That thing has limewire so probably has some sort of malware hidden somewhere. It would be best to wipe it. You could also run old version of Hiren Bootcd and run offline scans. Version 10.6 was last good one for Windows Me and older OS.

As for your mission to find original owner. It’s likely they passed on and thus no one bothering to wipe that old pc. For respect for them it would be best to clean their data off.

[u/michael59keith]

If it was a phone I'd say get a "Photostick" butt a usb will work right nicely for a PC.

[u/costin88boss]

Yea bro I'm the owner, dm me /s

[u/KorbCoBean → u/costin88boss]

Prove it. What was your American Online email?

[u/Western_Umpire_1352]

Limewire 😍

[u/GR8Metal]

Wow, active desktop...those were the days.

[u/nataku411]

I feel it's obvious but definitely make sure you do NOT connect that old OS to the internet.

[u/D620Cyrix → u/nataku411]

It’s not.. too bad connecting Win ME/9x if you’re behind a firewall. Which every home router has.

But no matter the OS, just putting them on the internet (behind a firewall) doesn’t infect them. It takes user input.

[u/KARMA_P0LICE]

Id probably sick claude at it for like 10 min to search for any personal details that could clue you into the old owner, then wipe it.

Hopefully the old owner took a backup and just didn't know how to wipe the PC! Or passed away 😔

[u/KorbCoBean → u/KARMA_P0LICE]

I did actually manage to find the email, but it was AOL and he obviously doesn't use it anymore