Wiping Windows 7

[Vandle]

Hi, got an old all-in-one Sony Vaio desktop I want rid of. The local council do an E waste recycling scheme and I can drop it off there, not sure how they recycle though as I doubt it would be much good to anyone. It was great in its day (and expensive) but just using it there its frustratingly slow.
Trying to wipe the drive clean and can't find a way to do it. A search suggests just going to system restore and resetting back to factory settings but that option isn't available and the earliest restore point isn't early enough. Its Windows 7 home premium. Other options require the original disk which I don't have.

Any ideas? Is there a programme I can download and run? Or should I just rip out the HDD and drill some holes in it?

 

[Vandle]

Thanks all. Will try again tomorrow with DBAN.

In the old days (and your laptop sounds vintage) I'd use a USB bootable copy of DBAN to properly format the hard drive

Darik’s Boot and Nuke – DBAN

Erase hard drives, desktops, laptops or servers free with a Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) download. Try it now.

dban.org

How vintage are we talking for the laptop? There's a whole retro scene for old laptops, especially the likes of Sony. Have a look on eBay, might be worth wiping and selling on

It’s a vaio desktop, not laptop. Touchscreen, was their iMac rival attempt. Weights a ton

Sony VAIO VPC-J116FX/B

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