Cleaning/deleting files before giving my old desktop to charity (1 Viewer)

Hi,

I have my old office desktop which was only ever used in my little business & so has been well looked after, has a decent quad-core processor, stacks of memory etc. & I'm looking at cleaning it up before giving it away.

As it was used in my business, it contains financial info. & customer details etc. that need to be wiped/destroyed so they cannot be recovered, BUT I want to keep the OS (Vista) & some software like MS Office on it so its of some use to the charity.

Whats the best way to remove/destroy the exsiting files?

I think I still have the recovery DVD's from new, so is an alternative to simply remove & replace the actual HD & then restore using these? Is this easy?

If I do that, will it then need to complete several years worth of windows updates when it first goes back online?

Any help/advice would be appreciated.


Cheers,
JHFC.

Thanks Nick...Does that leave the OS intact....or does it just wipe everything?

Cheers. I'll have a root around & make sure i've got the restore discs & then blitz the bugger...