Computer Cleaning Software.

Question

I'm looking for a software proven to work in cleaning personal information an such things off my personal computer because I'm donating it and it has plenty of info because it was used for business.

Answer 1

The U.S. treasury and some of the military used the most sophisticated removal/deletion programs available to clean computers they were putting up for salvage and sale.

Foreign governments and others bought some and were able to retrieve data from them.

The only sure way to insure no important data goes out with your computer is as Ross L. advises: Remove your hard drive.

Government agencies and industry remove and completely destroy hard drives when they want absolute certainty that no data gets out.

Answer 2

Since you have important data, it is best to just pull your hard drive and then donate the computer.  It would take over 5 formats to remove all traces of important data.  

Deleting the documents does not do it, reinstalling an OS over the existing one will still have traces.

Sorry there is not easy way to protect yourself and your data and still be a nice person.

Answer 3

I recomend 2 run atleast 2 cleaner s/w's : CCleaner n WiseDiskCleaner

n go 2 sound sleep after dat..

Answer 4

You will want a tool that can do a complete format of the hard drive.  Not a quick format as that just lists files as deleted, but completely formatting so that the drive is written in all binary 0s making it unrecoverable.

Answer 5

You should install CCleaner, it will get rid of alot of temporary files on your computer. It also has a registry repair system, which is easily the best free one available on the Internet:

http://www.ccleaner.com/download

Hope that helps.