Preparing a dell for re-sale?

So I'm about to sell my dell (and I've been using Vista on it lately but don't plan on giving my vista license to the buyer, so I want to put back the Windows XP Media Center Edition. Should I just take the Windows XP DVD reinstall the OS, and just not boot up after its done installing so the new owner and register and put their name on windows and such?

 

i wouldn't do anything yet howardpm, why dont you find a buyer first then decide? i am sure some buyer would per to install their own OS...

 

Well I'm sure someone at my office will buy it, but I'm not going to send out an email saying I'm selling a notebook with no OS, but I'll install the original one if you want.

 

Some people aren't too competent updating drivers and ensuring that all security patches are applied, etc so as a courtesy to whoever ends up buying it, I'd install XP w/ some general name or something and make sure everything was updated properly before selling it. If whoever buys it knows how to do that stuff then you didn't hurt them any, they can do it again if they want. If they don't know how to do it, they'll be more satisfied with their buy because of your extra effort and they probably won't know enough to care too much about the name of the computer anyways.

 

Its very easy to change the registered users name in XP. I would install XP at least this way you can show potential buyers all the features and they fact that everything is working. GL
BTW, What kind of Dell is it, and how much are you going to ask for it?

 

ive always wondered, how hard is it to recover deleted files on a drive? I prefer to not reformat and do clean installs, beucase its a pain and people prefer to have the software on there. But i wonder, even if I delete my personal files...are they easily recovered?