Cleaning PC for sale

[rtcatfish]

I have a 2 month old HP Desktop with Vista. I'm fed up with Vista and want to sell it to a freind. They only thing I've done with it is looked online a couple of times at Paypal and Ebay and I've paid bills, credit cards, mortage, ect and looked and my bank account. Would someone be able to get my credit card and back account numbers off the PC or do I need to restore it to the factory settings or anything. Thanks in advance for any help.

[4thpc]

Did you ever save any bank statement, most in PDF file, onto the PC? If so you have to do something deeper. It's very hard to make the hard disk (and other media) really clean. Even you have formatted the drive, the data and files once saved on the drive still can be retrieved. McAfee has a software claiming to be able to clean that out. If you are too concious on this, just buy a new hard drive and swap the original one out if you can install the OS and software on the new drive (usually you can't because the bundle from the PC only knows the original drive).

[classicsoftware]

If you have a restore cd, zero fill the drive and restore the system just like it was new....

[rtcatfish]

I never saved any account information PDF file or anyway else. I just looked at them online and did save passwords but since cleared them.

[johnny_quest]

It's probably fine, but if you want to be sure, do what classicsoftware said.