[ouchi]

Hi all

I want to completely wipe my laptop as I am selling it, so naturally dont want a trace of myself or existing progs on it

It was suggested to me that the W7 installation disc would give me the option but it does not seem to, so can someone please walk me through how to wipe the laptop compeltely?

Many thanks

[Hermitt43]

Here is a guide to clean installing Windows 7....
http://www.blackviper.com/os-install...install-guide/

Jim

[etaf]

whats the make and exact model of the laptop ?

you may have a recovery partition or supplied / made recovery DVD/CDs

[pooveyhead]

In order to totally wipe the hard drive as you suggested, you'll need to 'zero' the drive, or overwrite every sector with zeroes. DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke: www.dban.org) is a great free option that does just this...simply burn the .iso file to a DVD (recommend Imgburn for that job: http://www.imgburn.com/) and then boot your computer from the DVD and type 'autonuke' when prompted. You will completely erase all data from the drive by using this option, so be forewarned. You can then decide whether to re-install Windows or go with a free Linux distro (www.ubuntu.com recommended).