The basic equipment required for a good laptop cleaning is a can of compressed air and some disinfectant or alcohol wipes. For a slightly deeper clean, you may also want to grab a screwdriver and remove the bottom cover of your laptop so you can carefully blow out any dust that’s accumulated on the fans and vents. Your hard drive should now be safe to give away or sell.

Double-check any important files or settings are backed up to another device. In the specs of each laptop, they’ll market the company’s idea of the product’s battery life, and your mileage may vary. According to Microsoft, this process deletes all your files and settings. However, if you want to wipe your hard drive data to government standards, you might want to tryActive KillDisk, and Softpedia DP Wipe. For the Mac, Paragon’s Disk Wiper is free, and also in compliance with government erasure standards. Another good budget gaming laptop choice is the HP Victus 16z, which comes with an RTX 4050 and a larger screen than the Victus 15 variant.

Unlink from your Microsoft account

So what you’re paying $200 extra for is the better processor and GPU. If you’re looking for a super portable, 2-in-1 device that runs Windows 11, check out this configuration of the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 that’s on sale for just $1,299. This is the 2022 version that offers a 13-inch touchscreen. You can do that using the Device Manager — to get started, open the Device Manager from the Start button and then find the device that needs updating in the list of devices. See our guide on how to update or reinstall drivers in Windows 10 for detailed instructions and further information.

Moving up another step in GPU, the OMEN Laptop X16 is where we start seeing some real gaming power. It comes with an RTX 4070, which is a card that can finally run games at 1440p and at or over 100hz refresh rate, and it will certainly be able to take advantage of the X16’s display. We also love to see that it comes with a larger 1TB SSD, the equally powerful Intel i HX, and 16GB of DDR5 RAM, making this an overall great gaming laptop for the price. Read more about Sell my laptop near me here. If you’re looking to grab a gaming laptop, this Prime Day October 2023 is the perfect time, especially since Prime Day has traditionally been a great time to pick up new electronics. In fact, we’re seeing a lot of great gaming laptop deals across the board, whether you want something budget-friendly or you want a beast of a gaming laptop that can run anything.

How to securely wipe a drive before selling your laptop

Sometimes, you may need to sell old laptop for cash. This phenomenon may become more and more common. Then, some people may want to know how much my laptop is worth. When you decide to sell old computer, you must price it first. A second precaution to take is unlinking the laptop from any software subscriptions.

Punching a few holes in it with a power drill usually does the trick. Finally, click Restart in the pop-up to confirm that you want to reset the Chromebook back to factory settings. Click the tray – the section with the Wi-Fi icon, battery icon, and time on the Shelf – in the bottom left corner of your screen. Release the power button when the text below the Apple logo says “Loading startup options.” If Device Encryption isn’t an option for your PC, you might be able to turn on BitLocker, depending on which version of Windows 10 you have, or if you’re using Windows 11.

If you choose to sell your old computer with the hard drive still in it, make sure you use a military-grade disk wipe utility on it first. Some people buy old computers strictly to extract personal information from the previous owner. Old hard drives are a treasure trove of information for would-be criminals, according to a 2007 study. Follow the instructions to complete the process, and Windows will reset the computer back to its factory default settings.