Prevent my parents from formatting my HP 2010 laptop even though I'm the admin?

Question

I have a 2010 HP laptop. I have Windows 7. My parents made an admin account to control me, but I made a password reset disk. So I have complete control of my laptop.

My parents were talking about going to Office Depot and paying an employee there to format my laptop.They said something about formatting it into a NTFS. And they even backed up all of my laptop data onto a hard drive.

What can I do to prevent the Office Depot employees from accessing that feature?

Also: They didn't buy me the laptop.

Answer 1

You cannot prevent this. Anyone with physical access to the machine can do whatever he wants, including a complete format of the disk. One of the cardinal rules of security is that it's impossible to completely secure a computer unless you can prevent people from gaining physical access to the machine.

Answer 2

Dude...there is no way to stop or prevent anyone from formatting a computer. You can format it by a linux disk, a windows disk, any other disk. You do NOT use the operating system to format its drive. NTFS is the default file system for Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8. FAT and FAT32 are old file systems that do not support encryption.



Lock up your laptop in a file cab, or lock it in a safe. Then no one can use it.

Answer 3

Not possible. formatting is done outside of the operating system. Your parents were kind enough to back up your data. Perhaps they noticed something wrong that needs to be fixed.

Answer 4

Your not going to outsmart a computer specialist.