Filed under: Clean Up Computer
Aside from clearing browsing history and cookies, how can I "clean up" my computer when selling it?
April 9, 2011
6 thoughts on “Aside from clearing browsing history and cookies, how can I "clean up" my computer when selling it?”
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Clean Registry and Optimize PC
Reformat your hard drive with a re-installation disc and if you don’t want that, then you can get some products from Symantec, then have some programs that will clean out your computer efficiently.
If you are not going to format your disk, try this way.
Uninstall software you don’t want to sell with the computer and then, from ‘Help and Support’, find recovery tool to rollback your computer to original state.
Otherwise, create an account with sysadmin privilege, login it and remove some sensitive folders from ‘Downments and Setting\{your account}’
Use Boot an Nuke and reinstall the OS.
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
That will make sure they won’t be able to recover anything you had on there.
Depends if you want to just clean up your system or wipe out all info. Please note the choices I give you are completely free and a simple restore/format DOES NOT wipe the info.
1) CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. CCleaner also fixes your registry. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware.
http://www.ccleaner.com
2) If you would like to erase and wipe all information from your harddrive, I reccommend you use Active@ KillDisk. This powerful and compact DOS software allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. This is security software for unrecoverable data elimination for any computer capable of booting in DOS mode from floppy drive. It uses access to the drive’s data on a physical level via BIOS bypassing logical drive structure organization, thus it does not matter operating systems and file systems located on the machine, it can be DOS, Windows 95 / 98, Windows NT / 2000 / XP, Linux, Unix for PC. Active@ KillDisk conforms to US Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DoD 5220.22-M. You can be sure that once you clean up with Active@ KillDisk, sensitive information is purged out forever. We highly recommend you to run this FREE utility for the hard and floppy drives you want to dispose of, recycle, re-use, sell or donate to somebody.
Please note: If the CIA or FBI is after you, destroy the hard drive. It is possible to recover data even if it has been erased and written over many times.
http://www.killdisk.com/
http://www.download.com/Active-Kill-Disk-Hard-Drive-Eraser/3000-2092_4-10188745.html?tag=lst-0-2
if you want just "cleam up" then format your HD.
I would not sell a computer after just clearing cookies and history – it would still contain valuable and personal information and also clearing cookies and history does not clear forms and auto-fill passwords, so anyone who buys it could potentially have all of your access codes into financial and passworded sites.
First of all to clear such things you would need to "delete forms" from Tools so that auto-fills will be deleted but personally I would still not be happy selling my computer like that. If you have the Windows disk then put it into your pc and start it up, this will reinstall Windows and the computer will be as new and without ANY of your data. If you don’t have the disk then go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore and restore back to the earliest possible date – preferably when you first bought the pc – and that too will put it back to how it used to be as new. Remember though that System Restores can be reversed so delete any valuable info first, reinstalling Windows is the safest option overall.