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.

Delete and uninstall data and programs.Īlternately: erase everything, including Windows.

While you can’t securely delete everything, you can get close.

How to wipe a pc