how do i delete files

momoyama

Regards the secuity of data, what is being said is completely true in that only dedicated software will make data reconstruction impossible. Even my "zero fill" suggestion isn't actually all that good. But let's keep out feet grounded people. We're talking about the PC that was being used by the OP's grandson. Only the OP / Grandson will know just what is on there and how sensitive it is.

Someone has suggested hard drive removal. This is by far the best option. I personally will not buy a second hand PC. The reason being the Mean-Time Before Failure of hard drives. IE you just don't know how long the hard drive will last before it dies. So yes, remove the hard drive and replace it with a new (but cheap) one. THEN re-install your OS and software from the rescue CD.

andy2004

There are many free utilities to wipe hard drives out there, i'm going to assume the OS is XP, i'm also going to assume that you dont have the cd's and that the original os is on a hidden partition on the harddrive, aka HP, DELL, ACER all do this, Usually by pressing on of the F keys at boot up do you get boot from this hidden partition, so BATs999 info about them not being using was useless.
If the above is true then wiping the disc means no OS and i dont think you want to pay out £70 for a replacement, as no one would want to by a computer without one.
so assuming all the above is correct,
do a full restore of the harddrive so its like it came from the factory, then run a wiper on the freespace, http://eraser.heidi.ie/ use this small and freeware and has a portable version, nothing to install, extract to a folder of your choice and run eraser.exe,
a quick how to, after running the program, right click edit and select preferences / erasing, on the new opened window, select unused disk space, and select the wiping method of your choice. there are 5 to choose. after choosing, you can now wipe the freespace knowing no one will be able to recover any data.

1 is the best it will completely wipe the data, no one in the word would be able to recover 1 piece of data. DoD = Department of Defense, and would be quicker than 1,
after clicking OK, you will need to right click on a empty space in the main window and select NEW TASK, by default wipe free space is the default, choose the drive, and click ok, in the window you should now see one task, all you need to do now is RUN it. Ctrl+R or click the RUN button

Laz123

A good solution andy2204.

andy2004

It would only target the unused disk space as the pic says. So it wouldnt actually touch any windows file, taking it back to factory install would also help due it it overwriting files on the hard drive and making it ready for someone else.
Its not 100% perfect as you would still get those tiny bits of data in the clusters
a cluster depending on hard drive size is usually 4096bytes, if your file only fills 2000bytes that would leave 2096bytes that wouldnt be able to be seen, but could contain information. But no recovery software would actually be able to recover that info, you would literally have to read ever cluster on the disc. so technically safe.
I've only found 1 program so far that can delete the "slack space" and it also cleans the MFT aswell, but unfortunately not freeware.

http://www.diskcleaners.com/clndisk.html this will clean the slack space and is a little bit easier to use than the previous, but not freeware. you need a password to register the program.