pc cleanup

[mic406]

i just finished building my new pc and thinking about selling my older one. i know there are a bunch of pc file cleaners. i might need some recommendation which is good. also i want to know if could leave some of the software on and only delete personal info i used to register them without going to every application individually?

[GaryRouth]

For peace of mind, many of the techs I know zero-write the hard drives & run a fresh install of the operating system when selling their older computers, especially if they've used it for any banking or online purchases. Otherwise, someone could theoretically use a Recovery utility to "undelete" some of the personal information.

As far as including any previously registered programs, if you haven't loaded them on your new computer, there's no reason you couldn't include them - just re-install them.

If the system is going to a family member or trusted friend, certainly no reason why you couldn't use a cleanup utility. The one built into Windows will clean up leftovers & temp files. Most programs don't store much personal registration information locally, but on the systems at their software-developer's website that is visited when registering. Local personal info is usually just copy-protection, or used for templates (for cover letters, faxes, etc).

I looked for a minute over at the MSN downloads, and there are so many utilities it makes my head spin. . . So I'll leave that up to you, or perhaps another tech will know of a utility that'll work

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[MrDon]

How do you 0 write the hard drive?

[GaryRouth]

[. . . mrdon - to zero-write a hard drive, you use a utility provided by the manufacturer of the drive. The utility is on a bootable floppy diskette or CD. It literally writes zeroes to the drive, COMPLETELY erasing all data. No recovery of such data is possible from the hard drive after a zero-write. . . The utilites are usually available free of charge as a download at the manufacturer's website (and a disk usually accompanies the drive with a retail purchase). . . ]
. . . Gary

[MrDon]

Thanks Gary!