That’s about as good as you can get using this approach. Tools like Drive Wiper actually overwrite all of the unused space on your hard drive with random data to completely remove all traces of what had been stored there before. Merely deleting files doesn’t overwrite the data, so it could still be recovered. Using a tool like CCleaner’s “Drive Wiper”, securely erase unused space on your hard disk.
These are hidden files in the root of your system drive, typically C:\.Īll of these files could contain private information, and could be turned back on by the machine’s new owner should they so desire. Turn off Hibernation and remove the hibernation file. Set your virtual memory to zero and delete the paging files. You may want to take an image backup prior to the cleaning, in case you want to be able to recover from that worst-case scenario.
I’m not a big fan of registry cleaners, but this is a case where they might remove additional information you don’t want left behind, and the cost of failure (an unbootable machine) is relatively low. The goal here is to remove traces from browser caches, temporary files, and a host of other things - many of which might be benign, but many others that may inadvertently contain things you’d rather not share with your machine’s subsequent owner.Ĭonsider running a registry scan. Run the built-in Disk Cleanup Utility, or, better yet, grab a copy of CCleaner (a free download - you do not need to buy support), and use it to clean up as much as it can. This should delete a plethora of files and settings associated with each account. If your machine has more than one user account, remove all except for a single account that has administrator privileges. It uses a couple of levels of “aggressiveness” to determine what to remove, and this is one case where it makes sense to be as thorough as possible. Revo not only lists more things, but it uninstalls more thoroughly. The process starts by deleting your data files and uninstalling all the programs you’ve used or added and don’t want to be part of the machine when it’s reused by someone else.įor your data files, that means deleting things from My Documents and wherever else you kept data files.Ī good start for programs is to take a walk through Add/Remove Programs, or Programs and Features in Control Panel, or the Settings App, and just start uninstalling.įor extra security, you might want to use Revo Uninstaller instead.
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