Wiping Hard drive from laptop

If you have a recovery disk or partition, that will wipe everything by overwriting the drive.

If you do not, use CCleaner and use the wipe free space option.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/ccleaner_standard.html

 

Google your laptop brand and model followed by "recovery". If it's newer, you simply find out which key to press on boot and restore it to factory defaults. Problem solved.

Otherwise:
1: MOVE any files to another drive or wherever you back them up. For example photos, pictures and documents. You can move them by selecting the files you want and then right click and drag and drop selecting "move files here". Now they are off your drive.

2: Download http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/iobit_uninstaller.html and look for the "batch uninstall" and select everything you want to remove. It will take a while. Then do the "powerful scan" and remove everything it finds.

If you want to wipe free space and protect old files from someone else recovering them, then:
Get CCleaner and go to tools, drive wiper and select only your C drive. Choose free space only (very important and the default setting) and 3 passes. This makes old data unrecoverable.

I think your just looking to get your programs and files off it so you might not need that last step although some people like to so their stuff can be recovered. Up to you and how paranoid you are