selling laptop, need to delete files w/o removing xp

title says it all (for the most part)

how do i do this? i don't have the windows xp disc. I searched around a bit and i guess if i DBAN it then the OS will disappear too. The buyer said that he would like to keep xp on the computer when i offered to put linux on it would have made it much easier haha

any ideas? is this possible without the xp disc?

 

What files do you want/need to delete?

If we are talking PERSONAL files, I would go to USERs in Control Panel, create a new user, test to make sure it loads, then delete the original USER account from the new one (check remove all personal files checkbox)

Now, the original user account and any personal files are gone.

This leaves all programs in place, though. Those you remove in ADD REMOVE PROGRAMS in control panel. Add/Remove Programs may leave some files behind, though, so drop into c:\Program Files\{program name or program maker name} to delete what is left behind.

EDIT--oops, hit post with my thumb

In addition, obtain some software that will overwrite delete files with 0s or randome garbage to ensure the buyer can not undelete the deleted files easily...something like

http://www.softdd.com/no-file-recovery/

 

If you are worried about any possibility of your personal information falling into the wrong hands-- you should buy a new hard drive and pay the $10 or whatever it is if anything for the recovery cd.

 

It all depends on how thoroughly you want to make the files in question "gone." If the buyer is unlikely to do something like run a file recovery application on the drive to see what s/he can find, then simply deleting the files, or the user account as gerryf19 suggests, should be sufficient. On the other hand, if there's a non-negligible risk that the buyer might go "exploring" with some file recovery application, then gerryf19's idea of using an overwrite app to overwrite deleted files/empty space is a good idea.

If you want to be more sure, delete the files, delete the user account, run an overwrite app, then make a full backup copy that can be used to restore from a complete hdd failure, replace the existing hdd with a new hdd, and then restore the backup you made back onto the new hdd.

So long as you don't make a byte-by-byte copy of the original hdd, whatever backup utility you use should just make copies of the files that are still listed in the file system. Thus, none of the deleted files should show up in the backup. As a result, once you restore that backup onto a new hdd, the deleted files should have essentially disappeared.