what would i need to do to clear all my private data, apps, settings, etc from my n900 to get it ready for sale? i wasnt sure if flashing, or reflashing, or whatever was necessary or not. i'm a total noob when it comes to all this (mainly why i'm sadly parting with it) so a guide for dummies would be helpful. (i dont know anything about linux, x terminal)

any help would be appreciated.

yes...you can deletel alot manually, but to get it to a complete out of the box state, you should flash the firmware AND the emmc.

I would say follow the tutorial here:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_t...rmware#Windows

But with a slight modification. See the line at step 2 in the second list of steps, under "Flashing using the command line"? type this, but without the -R at the end. So if you downloaded the newest version of the Nokia software (in step 1), that would be:

Then, follow the "Flash the eMMC" part. Basically, get also the eMMC image from the same place you got the firmware from, then type:

If you have any problems with this I'm sure someone will chime in and help

ive always heard that you should flash the emmc first...? does it matter? ive seen a couple people post problems doing it the other way.

There's a big red box on the tutorial saying:

So I guess it has to be done that way

I am not sure if i remember this right but if you flash with the vanilla doesn't the themes and maps get deleted too? So maybe a backup of those first would be recommended..

Well, that's the goal here, isn't it? to get it back to vanilla content without anything on it, as if it were straight out of the box?