How to make a PC safe to sell? EDIT: Appear to have broken it now....

lilmissmup

I brought my new pc a year ago and have an old one just sitting upstairs which is never used.

I am wanting to sell it on eBay to make £100 or so.

How can i completely restore it so no-one can access any private information that might somehow still be on hard drive? I know i need to restore windows to its original settings but just wondered if there is any software i can use to wipe any hidden files off the hard drive?

tradetime

lilmissmup wrote: »

I brought my new pc a year ago and have an old one just sitting upstairs which is never used.

I am wanting to sell it on eBay to make £100 or so.

How can i completely restore it so no-one can access any private information that might somehow still be on hard drive? I know i need to restore windows to its original settings but just wondered if there is any software i can use to wipe any hidden files off the hard drive?

Dban you will need a windows or recovery CD if you want to sell it with an OS installed
Doubt you get £100 for it mind, unless it's pretty modern.

lilmissmup

Its 4 years old with 15" TFT Monitor, XP on it, 512mb, 180gb harddrive, can't remember the rest, i upgraded the graphics card on it.

If i make some money its better than nowt.

tradetime

lilmissmup wrote: »

Its 4 years old with 15" TFT Monitor, XP on it, 512mb, 180gb harddrive, can't remember the rest, i upgraded the graphics card on it.

If i make some money its better than nowt.

Absolutely, have no idea what that would fetch, but if you Dban the drive then reinstall your OS.
DriveMax run before you wipe it and saved to a disc will make it easier to put all your drivers back on after re-install of OS in case you missing any software discs.

lilmissmup

All the software came on the PC so i don't have an XP Disc.

Do i need to make a windows recovery disk then go from there?

I think i do have one somewhere.

Sorry for sounding stoopid.

poppy_f1

lilmissmup wrote: »

All the software came on the PC so i don't have an XP Disc.

Do i need to make a windows recovery disk then go from there?

I think i do have one somewhere.

Sorry for sounding stoopid.

use the recovery disc or make one from the PC then run it

John_Gray

Have a look at the free Eraser from Heidi Computers, which can be run under Windows to delete files. Obviously, check that it does what you want!

tradetime

lilmissmup wrote: »

All the software came on the PC so i don't have an XP Disc.

Do i need to make a windows recovery disk then go from there?

I think i do have one somewhere.

Sorry for sounding stoopid.

Usually if there is no XP disc, there is some sort of proprietary recovery disc which will restore the computer to the state it was in when you bought it, this would contain your OS and likely any software that was bundled with it. (Unless of course it has somesort of recovery partition) Running Dban will erase this.which would complicate things.

tradetime

John_Gray wrote: »

Have a look at the free Eraser from Heidi Computers, which can be run under Windows to delete files. Obviously, check that it does what you want!

Eraser uses Dban for a full hard drive wipe or at least it used to. If you have no means of recovering your system however Eraser will do the job for you slightly differently though. You simply delete all the files and folders etc that you don't want falling into strangers hands, then run a wipe free space with Eraser, which would leave a recovery partition intact if you have one, and then you can recover your system to factory default afterwards

lilmissmup

How do i know which file to download? The PC is Windows XP Home.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=37015&package_id=65323&release_id=567184

lilmissmup

The eraser uses dban doesn't it?

I have found 1 Master DVD i made last year, should XP take up 2 dvds for recovery as for some reason i have written Master DVD 1 on it and wondering if i had to make a 2nd disc? Its not full the one i found.....