My wife bought a new Apple iMac, so we are giving her “old” HP Windows 8 laptop to a friend. I don’t want to lose many things on the old laptop, so am wondering if there is anyway to eliminate her sign on password and name and any other passwords that are needed to enter the computer or other places. We just want to leave most things as is without the old password and name requirements. We want to put the new owner information in place of the old owner information. Possible or do I need to reinstall Windows 8?
I think you can create a new user account, set it as an Administrator account, and delete the old (existing) accounts. Then delete the folders under C:\Users that belonged to those accounts. This should get rid of all the document and files (photos, music, etc) as well as credentials, saved passwords, etc, but not remove any installed software.
if you want to be doubly secure, wipe the free space of your hard drive (after doing what the prior post mentioned). just in case your friend decides to pass on the laptop to someone else, sell it on craigslist, whatever.
You can use a free program called “ccleaner” —there is an option to securely “wipe the free space” of your hard drive (obviously make sure you tick ‘free space’ only as opposed to the wiping the whole drive.