Free up hard drive

I have an older Compaq notebook that I would like to give to my neice for browsing and word processing purposes. The hard drive is 78% full and I am trying to reset the computer and free up the hard drive. It has sufficient memory and the hard drive capable of doing what she needs but I can't free up the hardrive. I have removed all the programs and old files but that hasn't solved the issue. It is operating window XP Home edition. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

I have an older Compaq Presadrio 715 notebook that I would like to give to my neice for browsing and word processing purposes. The hard drive is 78% full and I am trying to reset the computer and free up the hard drive. It has sufficient memory and the hard drive capable of doing what she needs but I can't free up the hard drive. I have removed all the programs and old files, I think, but that hasn't solved the issue. It is operating on window XP Home edition. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Where are you viewing the statistics? The Drive Properties?

Have you tried Disk Management?

Have you rebooted the computer after your data removal?

Do you have any Restore or Recovery Software? Norton Protection for example? If so such software retains all your deletions.

The best overall solution would be to run the factory restore procedure from Compaq and remove everything back to factory condition.