I am donating two laptops to charity and am trying to clean them up first by uninstalling a lot of unnecessary software and then using a wiping program to wipe personal data. However, when I try to remove some of the programs using Windows XP's "Add or Remove Programs" function, I get an Error 1327 Invalid Drive E:. I don't even have an E drive on this laptop, just a C drive and a D drive. Can someone help me figure this out so I can donate these computers? I was trying to avoid completely reformatting the hard drive because I can't locate the original Windows disks.

Many thanks.

If the program is no longer installed or was installed from a drive E: you can delete the program's files in C:\Program Files or wherever it was installed and edit the registry to get rid of the Add/Remove program's entry. But, frankly, it's probably a waste of your time. I work with a public library that receives computer donations. Without the operating system CDs, the computer has limited usefulness as an OS license must be added to be legal. I also wipe and thoroughly scrub the drive of any donations we receive to eliminate viruses/malware and then reload the operating system and applications to suit our environment. The drive may even get moved to another system.