How to clear a laptop before selling

[bigsister]

I'm sure this question must have been asked zillions of times, but I can't seem to find the answer. I am going to sell my laptop and want to make sure all sensitive info is removed. Can anyone give me any info please?
Thank you.

[Count-A-Strong]

Some advice here:
http://www.gadgetvalu...%20used%20laptop.aspx

[bigsister]

Thank you - will check it out.

[ZebUK]

If you use the system recovery utility that comes with laptops nowadays this might wipe the machine and restore it to factory settings (just like you got it from the shop) but to someone with the know-how your data can be recovered.

The best way to wipe the machine is to secure wipe the hard drive and the best tool I've found is "Darik's Boot And Nuke" or DBAN for short:

http://www.dban.org/

It wipes EVERYTHING on the drive.

[bigsister]

Thanks everyone.

[VHG]

One of the problems is that when you delete a file it is not really deleted, it is still sitting on the hard disk. Windows just removes the POINTER to it, not the actual file.

So you need to clean out the blank area of your disk.

DBAN may be overkill as it wipes everything off the disk but can take hours to run. It may also wipe off your recovery partition so you cant reinstall Windows.

A product called CCleaner clears out much personal information, and it also has a feautre to "scrub over" blank areas of the disk with rubbish.

http://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER