selling my laptop and need to clean it up, how?
 

just selling my laptop, there is nothing on there that I want so ideally want to remove all my files including pictures etc that I don't want?

For the net I have done the obvious and deleted temporary internet files, cleared cookies and internet history, do I need to do anything else to wipe out any record of sites I have visited (selling to family friend so I don't want them to see certain sites visited ;) :D )

TIA

James

Remove your Favorites too. If this is NT/2000/XP, you may be better off deleting the entire user profile and creating a new user. Or better still, reformat the HDD and reinstall.

I like the idea of formatting the HDD and re install, how do I do this? I still have all the windows xp install disks etc?

cheers mate

James

I think you can just boot off the XP CD-ROM and it'll enter setup; and one of the options near the start will allow you to format the HDD partition.

You would be far better off using a copy of FDisk to reformat as it allows you to do an "unconditional" format, which basically sets all the bits to 0 (or something similar). A standard Windows format can be undone with even basic tools like the command "unformat"! Unconditonal formats need specialist software to overcome.


M