How do I?

concerned43

Hi, hope someone can help....
I have a Packard Bell PC which I am selling due to not needing it
anymore. Problem is I have had the PC for a couple of years and have lost the paperwork that tells me about the PC. So my questions is - How do I find out from the PC things like disk size, memory size etc so I can put this info in my sales ad?

uint32

Belarc Advisor will provide you with an extensive list of hardware and software information. It maybe overkill for what you need but it's free and will certainly list all the information you need.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

keith1950

Hi, download 'speccy' from 'piriform' and it will tell you everything you need.

financequest

If you are running XP and Internet Explorer, goto IE, then "help" on the IE toolbar, then "About Interner Explorer", then "System Info". Memory size, CPU type, Display properties, XP version etc. can be found here.

googler

In XP, open Start Menu, right-click on My Computer, the General Tab shows what memory and CPU you have.

Open My Computer, and you'll find either a C drive or C and D drive (assuming you still only have a primary drive in the machine, and haven't added a secondary), and if you right-click on one or both, and click Properties it will tell you the size of the disk. If you have C and D, add them together to give total size.

Someone will be along in a minute to tell you what you need to do to wipe all your personal data from the hard drive.

My recommendation would be to sell the machine having removed the hard drive altogether (which you keep)

concerned43

many thanks for all replies - now have the info I need to sell!
I deleted all my files manually and emptied the recycled bin - is that all I need to do now, I was leaving some software on it i.e. Sage, MS Office, Windows XP and Adobe (all with original disks).

sharkie

now you are sure all those files are deleted, you need to wipe the free space, otherwise they could be recovered

you may get more selling the software separately, if licensing permits, as people will only pay you for an old computer. hopr you give them all the keys for the s/w too

http://sourceforge.net/projects/eraser/

googler

concerned43 wrote: »

I deleted all my files manually and emptied the recycled bin - is that all I need to do now, I was leaving some software on it i.e. Sage, MS Office, Windows XP and Adobe (all with original disks).

'Deleting' files doesn't actually delete the content - it merely deletes the index, the pointer to the file so that Windoze regards the space as released, free space to be used again.

Anyone with a utility like Recuva or Dban who got a hold of your PC would be able to get access to files you've deleted but haven't overwritten.

Again, my recommendation would be to remove the HDD. If you have all the disks, you could take the drive out, buy another, and sell the machine with blank HDD and all install disks. Safe as houses, but as said above, you may get more for the software separately.....

John_Gray

Defragmenting the hard drive would do quite a lot towards overwriting the data in the files you have "erased". But Sharkie's suggestion of Heidi's Eraser is certainly more thorough. (DBAN wipes the entire disk, including the operating system and all programs and data.)

It is possible to be excessively paranoid about the new PC owner being anxious to attempt to recover all the "highly sensitive, personal and valuable information" which obviously was contained in your files... :eek:

kwikbreaks

You would also need to delete the cookies, any saved passwords, cache and preferably history of any browsers on it too.

I agree with the sentiments of the poster who suggested removing the hard drive because someone clever enough would be able to extract lots of private data almost regardless of what you do if they had sufficient motivation.

I don't agree with actually doing it though because taking the steps already outlined would be enough to remove any easily retrievable data and the chance of selling to a potential data thief are probably pretty low and an old PC with no disk and therefore no operating system is virtually worthless.