Donate Compaq restore Factory Settings

[AJames147]

Hello,

I have an old Compaq laptop which I’d like to donate to a member of my community who is home schooling.

I’ve tried loads of things to wipe it, ie delete my data.

I’ve tried to restore to factory settings, but I get served a black screen that says windows failed to start, insert disc and try again.

however I don’t have the disk - this laptop is 11 years old!

I still reset, but every-time it turns on - all my documents are still in tact. 

Please can anyone help?

thank you 

[WAWood]

@AJames147 

First of all, unless you used specialized tools, I seriously doubt you actually tried to "wipe" it -- as folks say that here all the time without knowing what it actually means.

Second, as to the factory reset not working, you need to tell us the details.  Simply saying it's not working tells us nothing useful.

[AJames147]

thank you. I have updated my query.

[WAWood]

@AJames147 

OK, so thanks for the added information.

I mention the "wiping" situation because in what you are doing, it is very important, so much so that I wrote this tutorial about preparing a laptop for resale:  https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebooks-Knowledge-Base/Preparing-a-used-HP-notebook-for-resale/ta-p/...