Solved System Restore-Does it completely wipe everything?

[Weegee64101]

So, I'm planning on selling my PC and I've entered a lot of private information on this computer. I don't want to be a victim of identity theft and I don't want people looking at my documents. I know that just deleting them would be recoverable (since it doesn't delete the data, but it lets it be overridden later), but I'm wondering if preforming a System Restore would take my PC, keep the OS, and strip it bare to factory settings.

Thanks for reading,
-Dave

 

[Brink]

Hello Dave,

A System Restore would only take your system back to a point in time that the restore point was created for.

If this is for the HP in your system specs, then you could do a factory system recovery to restore the PC's state back to how it was new out of the box. This would wipe all data on the drive.

Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 7) | HP® Support
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Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Weegee64101]

Thanks a lot! I'll be doing this soon, and it's good to know that my personal stuff is safe. Once again, thank you very much.

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome. Just be sure to not select to create a backup, if the option is available, when doing the factory system recovery.

 

[whs]

Just be aware that when you do a System Recovery, you will have to reinstall all updates since the time your system came out of the box. This is not a problem, just very time consuming.

And all programs you had previously installed (except those that came with the system) are gone too.