I have a really ancient laptop that I want to sell for a couple of bucks (literally) on eBay or just end up giving away to excellent will.
Either way, I want to make sure any ancient personal information is not stored in this system without my knowledge. What I’m plotting on doing is moving anything I want to keep to another computer. Then do I reformat the hard drive? If so, would that wipe out my copy of Windows (95, I believe)? I want to be sure to leave it so that someone else can use it if they want to, just not with any of my ancient files there. Would you recommend a better way? I also couldn’t find any system restore disks. Do system restore disks really delete your information? etc. . .
Thanks!

I suggest wiping the computer clean and then selling it. People will pay more if they system is clean, it may help in the long run of the selling process.
If your ancient laptop is only running Win95 then I suggest using your Win 95 DOS Boot disk to re format the hard drive and then re installing the OS. if you have a Win 98 disk this would be better.
If you want step-by-step instructions, let me know.
G