Selling your laptop on an online website like Ebay or Craigslist could be a great way to make some extra money.

To sell your laptop you are going to want to make it clean! And I mean clean inside and out. So lets start with cleaning it of all your data. You don’t want the next person to see your browsing history, email accounts, passwords, sensitive personal information, pictures and music collection. Luckily this is easy to do with Microsoft Windows and only requires a few key strokes.

WARNING THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS WILL DELETE ALL YOUR FILES (PICTURES, DOCUMENTS, VIDEOS, MUSIC, PROGRAMS, SOFTWARE, AND SETTINGS)

From the Start Menu select the Power Icon and then select to Restart while pressing the shift key. This is going to take you to the Windows Boot Option menu. From here you can reset your computer back to its original configuration when it was new out of the factory. Choose Advanced Options, then select “System Restore”. From here it will ask you how you want to restore your PC. Choose to “Reset your PC”.

After it has finished resetting the operating system now you are going to need to make it clean on the outside. Nobody wants a laptop covered in crumbs, boogers, and what ever else people get onto their laptops. Use a microfiber cloth and an electronic safe cleaning solution. Be sure the cleaning solution will be safe to use on your laptop screen. You may need to consult your laptop manufacturers website for the best way to clean the laptop. You can blow out the keyboard by tipping the laptop and spraying some canned air at the gaps between the keys. You can also blow some air into the cooling vents. So make it sparkle because if it looks like new, then somebody will probably want it.