:confused: HElP! Need erase hard drive but not everything on the computer

[JewelsBBC]

Can I erase my hard drive and not wipe out everything? If so, how?We want to erase the hard drive on our desktop. We recently purchased a new computer, but we are still using the other one. well mostly for the kids and I use it when we both need to use the computer at the same time. We want to get the speed back on the computer and not have t worry about what the kids may find. We have plenty of other things to worry about than to worry about. anyways I want to do this with out completely losing everything. We have games (many) we bought on the INTERNET, all the Microsoft word, excel and eats., needless to say I don;t want to lose my Windows xp. Things of these nature I would like to keep. I have already made a hard copy of what I wanted to keep as far as files, pics., documents, anything that could be easily lost. But the other things I cant put on a disk.
I appreciate any and all help? Thank you for time.

Jewels

 

[PC eye]

First of all you get a warm Welcome to the Computer Forum! http://www.computerforum.com/70672-official-welcome-thread.html Please be sure to review the http://www.computerforum.com/52038-forum-rules.html

From your dilemna here you are interested in permanently removing some files without wiping any programs let alone the drive entirely. One free program you can download for something like this is called Eraser. The home page for this as well as the latest 5.82 version is found at http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

 

[Pongydog]

What kind of things are you "worried the kids might find"?

If it's personal documents such as letters or pictures just go ahead and copy them and delete them normally.

If it is left over Internet information, you can use settings in 'Internet properties' (right click the desktop internet explorer icon) to delete your internet cache, web browser histories, cookies etc.