want to clear laptop

sassybooboos

i want to sell my old laptop but i need to know how do i delete everything so its back to factory settings etc so no one will be able to get any of my info etc.

S0litaire

check this out
DBAN Darik's Boot 'n' Nuke.

It does exactly what it say's on the tin

Download the ISO, burn it to a CD stuck the CD in the laptop you wish to wipe, then reboot and boot from the CD.

Their is also a version that runs from a floppy disk if the laptop does not boot from CD.

albertross_2

dban will wipe it completely, you'll have to reinstall windows and any missing drivers from CD/web if you use it.

If you have a restore partition, you could use that to restore it to factory settings, and then use something like eraser to wipe free space, and any undeleteable remnants.

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

if you don't have a restore partition or CD, then the only option is to turn off system restore, delete all your data manually, uninstall any extra software you have installed, delete IE passwords, then use https://www.ccleaner.com, and eraser to try and tidy things up, won't be perfect though. A couple of utilities that will show some of the stuff left behind if you use this method.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/pspv.html

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shell_bags_view.html

Also see this, and related utilities

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mspass.html