windows ME 'died'

Ok, I had a spare Windows ME pc Emachines tower that I was handed down to
me. After having used it spareingly for 2 years, it died; we had a black out
and I think the machine fried because it was not on a surge protect outlet.
But the machine was off.

Anyways, before I part it out, or store it, or trash it, I want to remove
the hardrive to ensure security. This pc was not used but for occasional
surfing but i did make a few payments on it and saved the pages to "my
documents".... So my question is what do I remove to ensure that no
documents, pictures, or anything compromising stays on the computer? I
already know how to open the tower but dont really know what any parts look
like.
So, if you have tips, or can nicely direct me to read up on other sites to
accomplish this, I would appreciate it.
This was at least 7+ year old Windows ME edition and i never got the CD.
This unit worked fine til that day we had the power outage. Now it wont even
turn on. I thank you in advance.

--
Thanks so very much for your help-! ! ! !

Here's a couple of reasonably helpful pages :-
http://www.fonerbooks.com/r_hard.htm
http://www.helpwithpcs.com/upgrading/install-hard-drive.htm

When you've (successfully) removed it, you could either hit (very hard) it
with a sledge hammer and then take to you local scrap metal recycler or buy
an IDE-USB adapter and use it as a portable storage device.
e.g. http://www.cwol.com/usb/usb-2-ide-adapter-ud200.htm

Mart



"Marcy" <RM@RMcom> wrote in message
news:uWpd8Ck0IHA.4492@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> Ok, I had a spare Windows ME pc Emachines tower that I was handed down to
> me. After having used it spareingly for 2 years, it died; we had a black
> out and I think the machine fried because it was not on a surge protect
> outlet. But the machine was off.
>
> Anyways, before I part it out, or store it, or trash it, I want to remove
> the hardrive to ensure security. This pc was not used but for occasional
> surfing but i did make a few payments on it and saved the pages to "my
> documents".... So my question is what do I remove to ensure that no
> documents, pictures, or anything compromising stays on the computer? I
> already know how to open the tower but dont really know what any parts
> look like.
> So, if you have tips, or can nicely direct me to read up on other sites to
> accomplish this, I would appreciate it.
> This was at least 7+ year old Windows ME edition and i never got the CD.
> This unit worked fine til that day we had the power outage. Now it wont
> even turn on. I thank you in advance.
>
> --
> Thanks so very much for your help-! ! ! !
>