how do you wipe your hard drive?

lol hey there !!!!

ok well why don't you do a "System Recovery"

all you have to do is do a "System Recovery" what this does is erase every thing in your computer and will reset itself back to the regular programs it comes with, which it will me all your original Windows XP function like Windows Word, Windows media, Internet Explorer. and well you get the deal

Note this is not a System Restore... System Recovery is completely different.

System Recovery as i recall will erase everything and will set itself back to original windows XP. so make sure you save all your pics,Documents, music ect.. in a external hard drive or in a flash drive.

System Restore will only go back acouple of Days or even months depends on what you want and it will restore you computer to what you had it back in those days or month. for example if i have a scream saver as a dog and back 3 weeks ago i had a cat if i were to do a system restore my computer function will go back to how i had it 3 weeks ago in which my scream saver will now be a cat.

Simply deleting the files isn't good enough. The new user could use a program such as Active Undelete to recover many of the files you removed. Including ones containing personal information.

You need a secure delete program which will over write the file with garbage before it deletes it. That ensures that even if the new owner attempts to recover your deleted files their is nothing in them. There are also programs that will overwrite the unused sections of your hard drive to ensure anything you already deleted is nonrecoverable.

If you search for "Secure Delete" you'll get a list of programs you can use. Some are free or free for a trial period.

It would probably be best if you removed the existing partition, reinstalled windows on it then ran one of the programs that secures the unused sections of the drive removing any data remnants from your original install.

Use your desktop's reinstallation CD to reinstall Windows.

When it asks you which partition to install, be sure to delete all the partitions.

Now create one giant partition, let's say, "c:" in this case.

DO NOT do a quick format. DO the long format.

After reinstallation, use an eraser program like:

http://www.heidi.ie/node/6

Then do a minimum US Department of Defense, 5220.22-M (8-306. /E C and E) erasure on the unused space.

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Do you need to remove Windows completely or do you just want to remove files that you have downloaded?

Do a clean install from the install disk

you cant get it clean to where it cant be recovered a low level format woud be close but it still can be recovered and it will kill windows