I want to sell my old laptop

[FurrySlipperBoots]

But I'm scared to! I don't know how to reset everything so all my personal info is removed. Is there a quick and easy way to sort of 'wipe' it all at once? Also how to go about selling it? Should I go through a dealer or just advertise it on FB or what?

I have another ancient one (maybe 10/12 years old?) that's just shoved in its box under my stairs too. The letters on most of the keys have rubbed off, the sound is busted (headphone jack snapped off inside it) and it has no battery life left. It is technically still usable though. What to do with that one? Should I take it to the tip?

Windows Laptop I'm guessing.
Best way to ensure your data stays safe is to remove the hard drive and sell the laptop without it, but take pictures of it working first to put in the advert if necessary. Make sure you have backups of your docs , pics etc. Failing that (and if you are unsure about what to do) get a local PC shop to securely wipe the disk and then reload the operating system. Sell on FB or Gumtree.

Procedure is a little different if you have a ChromeBook.
For that you can do a Powerwash which resets the laptop to factory.
The older machine probably is not worth the effort. Remove the hard drive and skip it

It might not be easy, depending on how comfortable you are with the technical steps, but DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) will securely wipe the hard drive (but not SSD).

you would need to download from sourceforge.net/projects/dban/files/dban/dban-2.3.0/dban-2.3.0_i586.iso/download and create a bootable CDROM/USB, then boot from that.

Is that too complicated?

Thanks for the replies! Yes it's Windows. I was wondering about getting the PC repair shop guy to do it, but how do I know I can trust him?

I don't actually know how do remove the hard drive. Is it fairly straightforward?

What is SSD please?

Can you give us the model number of the laptop by any chance and is it running Windows 10?

SSD is Solid State Drive. A standard HDD (Hard Disk Drive) is built on spinning disks with a magnetic coating and moving read write heads. A solid state disk is just made up of memory chips with no moving parts. As SSDs are purely electronic they are a lot faster, but more expensive than an HDD.