Windows Target Disk equivalent?

[MIDI_EVIL]

I'm trying to format a friend's Windows computer, with Media Centre Edition installed.

I don't have the disks, and the HD has 22 Trojan viruses and various malware/spyware applications.

Is there a way to target disk the computer, and format the HD using Disk Utility on my Mac?

I'm really stuck here. Please help.

Rich.

 

[matthew24]

I believe that if it did exist I would know. I am sorry, I cannot help you.

 

[todd2000]

Well what good would formatting it do if you don't have the discs to re-installl it? If you have access to another windows PC, just make a boot disc from there(assuming his comp has a floppy drive) Of course that won't work if you want to format it as NTFS.

 

[BlackDan]

I'm trying to format a friend's Windows computer, with Media Centre Edition installed.

I don't have the disks, and the HD has 22 Trojan viruses and various malware/spyware applications.

Is there a way to target disk the computer, and format the HD using Disk Utility on my Mac?

I'm really stuck here. Please help.

Rich.

Just curious:
If you don't have the cd's, what do you intend to do after you formatted the disk?

1) You'll end up with an empty drive and no Windows-cd to reinstall? If you plan to install something else (most likely linux) then the installer will format the disk for you to EXT3 or whatever you wanna use.

2) There is no such thing as Target Disk Mode on a Windows machine, but you could take out the drive and mount it in your mac or in an external disk enclosure... You could then run disk utility to format the drive. Mind you it will not format the drive to NTFS, but most likely HFS+ ;-) Pretty useless if you want to reinstall windows... (but you can't anyway, cause you don't have the disks )

 

[BlackDan]

Well what good would formatting it do if you don't have the discs to re-installl it? If you have access to another windows PC, just make a boot disc from there(assuming his comp has a floppy drive) Of course that won't work if you want to format it as NTFS.

Yes it will format to NTFS, but as you said: if you can't reinstall, what's the point...

 

[MIDI_EVIL]

I have a retail XP, that was installed on a computer that isn't used anymore, it's fried. Since the version I have is older than Media Centre it won't let me pop it in and reinstall over the top, and for some reason, it won't boot from CD either. The only keyboard and mouse I have at hand are the official Apple Pro Keyboard and Mighty Mouse. XP doesn't seem to recognise them at BIOS or pre-install.

Thanks for all of your help.

I'm installing Ubuntu.

Rich.

 

[MIDI_EVIL]

Just an update, the Ubuntu install went smoothly, and it's now running so much faster than Windows ever was on my friends 3.0 Pentium 4.

I recommend it to anyone who just wants a PC for surfing, word processing and even photo manipulation as Gimp comes pre installed.

Rich.