will deleting profile be enough to give away xp machine?

[morgandm57]

I want to give away my old xp machine. can I just delete my old profile?

 

[androbourne]

Depends.

If you don't care about someone trying to recover your data. Then sure.

If you do care, then no. Its not enough. In order to fully delete something off a system it needs to be rewritten over first. A simple deletion does not actually delete it from the system until it is over written. Because of this someone could recover your recent deletions and access data, if thy really wanted too.

I would suggest you use something like WDSafeguard and do a zero wipe on the hard drive then reinstall Windows XP from scratch.

But of course that's if you really care about the data being recovered.

 

[utroz]

If at all possible wipe the drive with a program the overwrites the whole drive with either zeros, ones, or even better random zeros and ones a few times. Then reinstall windows and it will be good to go without any real chance of anyone recovering your data. If you do not do this it is very easy to recover your files...

 

[USAFRet]

I want to give away my old xp machine. can I just delete my old profile?

Wipe and reinstall.
The computer related "you" exists in more places than just the Profiles.