Get a computer ready to sell, delete personal info?

You may want to remove the hard drive and keep it - and buy a new hard drive and install that one - this way all your personal information is with you forever. As stated above, just because files are deleted does not mean they are gone forever - so in my opinion, the safest way is to keep the hard drive.

As others have said, you can perform a clean install of Windows if you have the original Windows disk. If you do this, make sure to remove the Windows.old folder from your hard disk once the new version of Windows has been fully installed. Otherwise all your previous information is still available. To do this properly, you have to run "disk cleanup" and select the folder called Windows.old. I believe it's either in the C: directory, or C:\Users directory, but you can just search for it if necessary.

There is also some third party software available that claims to fully erase your HDD, but I've never really used it so I can't recommend it. If you're really worried about giving away personal info then your safest bet is to just sale the computer without the hard drive, it's not uncommon that someone will sale their computer without the hard drive. But expect to sale the computer for less than expected.

A 'clean install' of the original software is just one step.

However, any good computer forensic expert would tell you that people can (given the right tools) still get information off a hard drive.

You might even go so far as to erase the drive, re-install the software and add the maximum amount of, say, audio or video files that your HD will allow, then do one more clean install.

The safest answer I seen was keep your hard drive, install a different one and then install the Windows on that one. Another good answer is to download a program called dban which does a security wipe of the hard drive, then reinstall your Windows.

http://download.cnet.com/Revo-Uninstaller/3000-209...

mainly used for uninstalling programs but it has an unrecoverable delete feature too. it will make any file you delete with the program disapear with no chance of recovery

use the CD boot disk that it came with to delete your computer files, you will have to reinstall windows.

Good luck :) hope it sells well.

reformat the hard drive

recover it to factory settings