4 year old toshiba laptop, it works well but have now replaced, 2 minds whether just to smash it up, destroy hard drive and bin but looking on ebay etc they do still sell for a fair bit, which will help subsidise new gadget. Not that there’s anything sensitive on it but any top tips for wiping files/data etc? I know how to in theory delete stuff but I also know clever people can get stuff back off hard drives even when you think it’s done. Cheers

have a look at DBAN

It’s easy to wipe securely using DBAN, but that will typically wipe the whole disk, including Windows, which will reduce the sell-on value. It’s difficult to properly delete all your personal user data but leave Windows intact. One approach is, after making sure that you have a recovery disk / recovery partition on the hard drive, to securely wipe just the active partition, then use the recovery disk / partition to reinstall Windows. Can be a bit of a faff though and is a bit techy. Alternative is to wipe the whole drive using DBAN then install Ubuntu/Mint.

Would this kill all viruses as well?
We have windows discs that came with the computer. Would these load windows back on,is it easy?
I am a computer idiot.

least hassle way would be to ebay it without the HD. You’d get a bit more for it than if you’d smashed it up! And you’d have a spare HD with a backup of all your old stuff on it.

Not all that much hassle to wipe the whole HD with DBAN and you’ll get a lot more for a fully working computer with a HD even if it’s wiped if you can’t be bothered reinstalling Windows – no cost to the buyer to choose their flavour of Linux. Better ways to keep backup than on an old HD which never gets spun up.

Oh and to the OP, yes it will kill viruses and anything else that’s alive on the disc. Not too much hassle to reinstall Windows from discs which came with the computer, though if you’re doing it that way rather than with a recovery partition then you or the buyer would probably still need to reinstall drivers etc. TBH if that’s what you’ve got then personally I’d just wipe the whole disc, not bother reinstalling and sell it with the discs (describe it honestly like that and you won’t put off many potential buyers).

Depending on what its been used for you might want to also wipe it with some disinfectant.

I used the restore function on my old Vaio. Accessible from the boot menu there were options to wipe/restore etc

Put it back to out-of-box condition

Without running DBAN or something similar? You do realise that doesn’t leave it quite in out-of-box condition?