First of all, you can forget what you paid for your old PC because it has no bearing on what it's worth now. For example, a Pentium II 350mHz PC with a 4GB drive that you bought 5 years ago for a couple grand might get you as much as $50 now. Check eBay. A '99 Pentium III at 700mHz might get $125 and a 2001 Pentium IV at 1GHz might get $200. The longer you wait the price just keeps dropping.

If you only have one new PC my first suggestion is to hang on to the old one as a backup. Connected to the Web it becomes an invaluable tool to help fix your regular PC. Using Google and a little patience one can find the answer to any PC problem. After all, there's no such thing as a unique PC problem with the whole world using Microsoft software. There's always a discussion going on somewhere about your exact problem if you just can find it. Become a Google expert. The backup PC can also let you get e-mail while your regular PC is down.

My second suggestion is to give your PC to someone in your family that doesn't have one. You'd be surprised how many seniors in River Bend are using PCs given to them by their kids and even grand kids. A PC doesn't have to be fast if it is used primarily for e-mail.

Ok, so you've decided that you don't need your old PC and want to sell it or give it away. What about all your stuff on it? You've probably already cleaned out your personal data but are you sure you got it all? You'd be surprised after years of use how much personal data is scattered all over your hard drive.

A sure way to assure that you leave no personal data on your PC is to remove your hard drive and bash it with a hammer. The problem with this is that your computer then becomes useless and nobody will want it. The monitor, of course, is worth something if it still has a decent display.

The best solution is to reformat your hard drive and reinstall your operating system or an upgrade. This cleans out all old data and restores the PC to run like new. Most old PCs have so much junk collected over the years that they've become agonizingly sluggish in operation.

We'll use Windows 95/98 for our example. Before you start you'll need to have the following: (1) A startup diskette. If you don't have one create it on a blank diskette by going to Control Panel/Add Remove programs/Startup disk. (2)You'll need your original Windows 95 or 98 installation CD. If you don't have one you might borrow one from a friend. If you presently have Windows 95 and can get hold of a Windows 98 Upgrade CD this is a good time to upgrade but be sure you get the product key along with the upgrade CD because you'll be asked for it.

Put the startup diskette in and boot the computer. Select "Start with CD ROM support." At the prompt type d: if it's not already shown then type format c: and your hard drive will be wiped clean. This will take quite a while.

If you are using a Windows 98 upgrade CD a display will appear asking you to verify that you previously had Windows 95 or 3.1 installed. You'll have to insert your old CD and type E:win95 as the path. If that doesn't work type D:win95. It will take at least 30 minutes to install Windows 98.

If you have problems reformatting or reinstalling Windows which might occur because of variations in operating systems I suggest you use Google in your working PC and enter search words such as "reformat Windows 98" or "reinstall Windows 98" because there is a lot of good information available to help you.