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Orange Furball

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 18, 2012
1,325
6
Scranton, PA, USA
Hello all, i broke my laptop, and sold it on eBay. I had connected it to an external monitor before to click the erase PC option that deletes all user data while keeping Windows 8 on the device (i was thrilled to see this option in windows finally)

So i did it.

Monitor went blank. And i cant see the image on the screen. I restarted a few times and all that but i cant get it to come on the screen to verify the wipe.

Help!!!!!
 

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TedM

macrumors 6502
Sep 19, 2012
356
2
California
That is bad times. Have you tried another monitor. My theory is you succeeded in wiping the computer and its missing drivers which is why the screen won't show up. It really sucks you can't tell what's going on. Thank god replacement screens aren't too bad.
 

Orange Furball

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 18, 2012
1,325
6
Scranton, PA, USA
That is bad times. Have you tried another monitor. My theory is you succeeded in wiping the computer and its missing drivers which is why the screen won't show up. It really sucks you can't tell what's going on. Thank god replacement screens aren't too bad.

It cant be missing drivers because i used the built in feature to only remove user programs and files not drivers.

I cant replace the screen because i already sold it and bought another laptop :/
 

spencers

macrumors 68020
Sep 20, 2004
2,381
232
Got access to another laptop/Windows computer? Put the drive in it and reinstall Windows
 

0dev

macrumors 68040
Dec 22, 2009
3,947
24
127.0.0.1
Pull the hard drive out, stick it in an enclosure, plug it into another machine, wipe it, boot from it, install Windows, put it back in the laptop. Result!

If you didn't encrypt your data I'd recommend zeroing out the drive when you wipe it too so your data can't be recovered.
 

Orange Furball

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 18, 2012
1,325
6
Scranton, PA, USA
Pull the hard drive out, stick it in an enclosure, plug it into another machine, wipe it, boot from it, install Windows, put it back in the laptop. Result!

If you didn't encrypt your data I'd recommend zeroing out the drive when you wipe it too so your data can't be recovered.


Got access to another laptop/Windows computer? Put the drive in it and reinstall Windows

How can i do this without disks? Its Windows 8 were talking about, Windows 8 is a diskless world :sly:
 

0dev

macrumors 68040
Dec 22, 2009
3,947
24
127.0.0.1
How can i do this without disks? Its Windows 8 were talking about, Windows 8 is a diskless world :sly:

What media is it on? If you have to rely on an installation partition on the hard drive then it should be easy enough if you boot from that drive on another computer, yeah. Don't wipe the drive if you do it this way though obviously.
 

Orange Furball

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 18, 2012
1,325
6
Scranton, PA, USA
Thank you. My god thank you!!


Never mind. Cant get past the attempting repairs thing. I went to advanced and then to continue to windows 8. I'm just stuck in a loop. Crap
 

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