Tips on Deleting Personal Info Off Your Computer

You just got a brand new computer and you want to give old one to a friend or family member. Its always wise when selling or giving away your computer that you remove all personal info off of it. There are several ways you can do this. In this article I intend to give you some pointers to get your older PC ready to pass it off to someone else.

One sure fire way of doing it is to wipe the hard drive and reload the OS. To do this you would delete the partition and create new one. Your Windows CD will help you do this all in one easy swoop. There is an option when you want to reload your OS that asks if you want to use the same partition or delete it and create a new one. Its always best just to do the latter. That way you know your drive is clean. This way all your personal info is gone and you can pass it off to someone else.

What if you don't want to reload or you lost your OS disk. Well this is where it gets a little more involved. What you would need to do first is to run an anti-spyware program and than an anti-virus program. Make sure you update your definitions before you start the process. This way you are doing your best to remove any problems that will affect the new owner.

The next thing to do will be to uninstall any programs that did not come with the computer that you added. You might even want to uninstall anything but the OS. That way the new owner can put on what they want. Make sure to uninstall any messengers and tool bars that would contain any of your personal information.

After you have done that you want to search through your document files and remove any personal documents, pictures, etc. Anything that is personal you want to remove those or transfer them to your new computer. I will assume for the most part you have already removed the important stuff to your new computer.

You want to use Ccleaner this will clean out all registry files and remove any personal information stored away. This program is free and very valuable tool for removing cookies and personal data off of your PC. It will also remove any program fragments from your computer.

You want to empty your recycle bin and delete all user accounts except the computers main one. You can change the name to administrator and remove the password. This will allow the new owner to setup their own accounts.

You want to go into Internet options on your Internet Explorer and remove any user data. You would do this by removing history, cookies, etc. Also, make sure you uninstall any browser add ons and any extra browsers like Mozilla Firefox.

One last thing to remove is your "My Recent Documents" folder. Microsoft has instructions here on how to do it. Once that is done all of your information should be gone for the most part. If anything still lingers it would be what you deleted recently off your hard drive. There is a program which is called BCWipe this scrubs off your free space of your hard drive. Using this will ensure that all your information is gone.

Now you have cleaned off your system of any personal information. You can feel confident that you can pass your computer off to someone else.