How do I wipe a HD

[EJBasile]

Hi Everyone,

I want to wipe the HD on my dell (windows XP) and reinstall the OS.

How do I do so?

Thanks,
EJB

 

[rozwell]

insert your OS discs, restart booting from the CD when you do, and its pretty self explanatory from there, and it will guide you through it.

be sure to back up anything important, and check twice.

 

[maya]

Take a dry cloth and clean it.

or "WIPE a HDD as in erase"


If you have another HDD booth off that, then do the following:

1. Open "Disk Utility" application.
2. Select the drive and click the erase tab.
3. Click erase and you are good to go.

If you want to erase via CD you can also do it via the second posters method.

 

[Nermal]

Boot from the CD, and press R to go into the recovery console when prompted.

Type diskpart to see a list of partitions on your HD. You will also be able to delete them using this utility.

If you wish, you can also type fixmbr to write a new Master Boot Record to the drive (this is useful if you've had Linux on the system and want to get rid of its boot menu).

 

[jlewis2k1]

with most companies like dell, hp, gateway and so on they usually have a recovery cd. this will basically format your HD then install XP again. Now, if you had a windows xp copy brought from a computer store then you can boot from the cd and you will have the option to format your HD. its pretty easy ... i have done it twice during the last 4 days on one computer.

 

[Nermal]

i have done it twice during the last 4 days on one computer.

Sounds accurate

 

[PickledSquirrel]

i have done it twice during the last 4 days on one computer.

Hope you were practising or teaching someone else... Otherwise you might be wanting a mac

-Squirrel