Junking My Computer?

Question

I am about to sell my computer or give it away to a used computer store and get myself a brand new one. However I am worried that anyone who gets hold of my old computer will able to access personal information I had on my computer or get access to my account passwords. Is deleting my document files enough? What can I do to make sure all my information trace is completely wiped off my old computer?

Answer 1

What you can do is reformat your computer. If you still have

your operating system cd (ie. Windows xp, 2000 or whatever)

than you pop that in your drive and it will give you an option to

reformat. If you do this all of your files that were personal

on your computer are gone and it intalls windows over again

with a blank drive. But if you are going to give the

comp. away to a store they will most likely do that anyway.

Good luck.

Answer 2

Deleting files won't be enough. What you do is to format your hard drive 7 times. Then remove the partition and put a powerful magnet on top of your hard disk. That will definitely erase the contents of your disk.

Answer 3

Put the Windows CD in and then reboot the computer.

Do a brand new installation of Windows ONTOP of the old one, you will have to fully format your Hard Drive.

Answer 4

to delete all of the internet files and cookies etc.
go to "start."
then to "control panel" click on "internet options."
then under general there it says browsing history. click "delete..."
at the bottom click on "delete all..."
check the box that says "also delete...."

there are other things in the control panel. make sure that before you take it there that you delete everything that is in the recycle bin. well good luck.

Answer 5

this is the tool to use for this:
http://dban.sourceforge.net/