best way to erase?

Hi , I'm hoping someone could despense a little advice. I am giving an older computer to a friend and want to clean off the hard drive. What is the best method or download to use? Also, I am using Norton Antivirus on my system,should I use any other programs when surfing to avoid all the crap out there,ie: trojan horses,etc. Thanks in advance,Randy

 

Format and reload OS.
Maybe Fdisk.

I would not use Norton, but many do, and certainly not by itself.

Search the Forum.

Look here:
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=25834
and here:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads29.html

 

Format the HD . Try this if you want to delete only certain files. It's called Eraser: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4221.html You should also have spyware protection. Read this and d/l the recommended programs: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=25834
P.S. I need to type faster.

 

I guess he just wants to delete some of his "unused" files, not his entire system . If you want to delete it off of the hard drive completely take the aforementioned advice. What I usually do is shift+delete the files. If you can't locate the files, which happens occasionally, just reformat the entire system. Reinstall your OS. I'm sure deleting the partition is more than enough to secure the destruction of your files. I use Norton, but I'm starting to question it's reliability. Keep these programs in mind:

Ad-aware for pesky spyware programs that have ALREADY been installed onto your computer
Spyware Blaster32 to keep the spyware out of your comp
SpyBot to detect other spyware that Ad-aware couldn't
ZoneAlarm to protect you from internet hackers and crackers. Just be careful because Microsoft is releasing its own firewall with SP2.

Don't forget to keep windows update turned on... just watch out for that darned SP2.

 

Assuming the files you want to delete do not justify reformatting your hard drive I would suggest downloading a copy of PGP and setting the wipe function to at least 7, I use 10. Use this to wipe the files from your disk. It deletes them then overwrites the space they occupied aith patterns. Not much chance of anyone recovering your data after using it.

It is also worth wiping the free space on your computer as deleteing a file only removes the header information not the file in total. This can also be carried out with PGP
The site for PGP is http://www.pgp.com