What to do with a used laptop?

Hi, I just bought a used laptop off someone from craig's list.

What should I should do?

im a bit paranoid about using my passwords (email, banking, investing).

 

You can always format the drive and reinstall windows. Then you should be fine.

 

^I used Sony Vaio Care to restore the hard disc drive to its original factory-installed configurations.

That should do it right?

 

You should be fine.

 

Just reformat with the supplied recovery media and you will be good to go.

 

If you're really paranoid you can always buy a new hard drive and sell your current one. Make sure the 1 you buy is a 2.5"

 

Exactly. A simple and reasonable (however, maybe not at the current economic climate) course of action. On the other hand, I could postulate that the "Man" is still in control?

Anywho, at some point you've got to shed your tin foil hat and move on with your life. In that case, the above suggestions should suffice.

 

Why waste money on a new hard drive?

If you restored Windows to original settings via recovery partition, you should be fine.
Though, I would personally recommend you rather do a clean install of the OS you have on the laptop and use the OEM key on the back of the laptop to activate Windows.

That way you will avoid any and all potential bloatware that came from the manufacturer.

Depending on which Windows you will install, make sure the edition (Home, premium, etc.) matches the one you have right now because the OEM key will only work on the one you have (though you can install either x86 or x64 version).
Furthermore, just in case, go to Device manager to make sure which devices are installed and find/download the appropriate drivers online to install separately if you do decide on a clean install (just in case windows doesn't detect and installs drivers on it's own).

Finally, make sure you install windows with any and all of the latest service packs slipstreamed on it (it will save you time from downloading updates online and of course, it will be faster).

 

The reason for "wasting" $ on a new drive is to get rid of all possibilities of getting info stolen by PHYSICALLY changing it. Reinstalling Windows has shown to be able to leave traces of certain viruses and malware.

OP, another thing is to remove your RAM and wait a few minutes then reinstall it. This all depends how far you're willing to go to protect sensitive data, but if my financial records are at risk I'd do this.