Going to run Killdisk

[BeastofGevaudan]

My computer is way screwed up... there is so much crap on here... i just want to wipe the entire hard drive clean, and re-start from scratch... i use windows xp...

im not a huge computer buff... but im not totally clueless either...

i heard about this thing called killdisk, that just writes nothing but zero's over the entire hard drive...

this would have to remove EVERYTHING right? any spyware, adware, viruses and everything else am i correct?

i came on here about a month ago, and was talked out of doing it this way, and i spent the entire day just picking through removing stuff... well it really didnt do anything... i just want to wipe it out completely

what would be a HUGE help would be if i could get some step by step instructions on how to go about doing this, from running killdisk to re-installing the operating system... written out so i can understand them please heh...

for instance... last time someone told me to reboot in safe mode... i had no idea how to do that, he had to tell me to hit f-8 while windows was booting... so please just keep that in mind and keep it simple... i would be very very thankful...

[Budfred]

If you had continued with us in the other thread, you might have been able to clean up the computer... Since you did not, the simplest way to wipe your computer is to use the software utilities from the manufacturer of the hard drive... If you don't know what that is, some other program will do it... If you have Killdisk, it will probably require installing it on a floppy disk and then booting the computer with it... You can find it by using Google to search for it if you don't have it... The instructions will be provided by the program... I don't know if anyone here is familiar enough with that specific program to give you detailed instructions, but since you are wiping the hard drive anyway, you do not need to be careful... Once you get to that point, we can walk you through a reinstall... Make sure you have a copy of Windows to install... Also, once you wipe the drive, turn off your computer, unplug it and press the power button... Then leave it for a while... You need to make sure the RAM is cleared too...

[Sylvander]

KILLDISK (http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm) impresses me.
I found the bootable floppy easy to make.
Boot from it and the program gives a nice display of useful info about your primary HDD and its partitions.
You can then choose to either write [a single set of] zeros to the whole of the drive, or to any series of selected partitions [you do them one at a time I think].

I'm now inclined to NOT use the manufacturers utility to set up a HDD for use [partition and format].
Perhaps it only applies to Maxtor HDD's and the MaxBlast utility, but I've found that it writes a DDO to the HDD [even when not necessary, like when cloning an old HDD to a new], and then certain programs, like ptedit & Partition Magic won't/can't work any more [report that a DDO is installed and refuse to proceed].

If you want to use a Win9x startup floppy at any point, use Bob Cerelli's Win98SE Startup Floppy (http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/floppies.htm#boot_floppy), it's easy to make and is better than the Microsoft version [e.g. it automatically loads SMARTDRV].

Step-by-step instructions for a Clean Install of WinXP (http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html).

I think this is the KILLDISK link I used.

[Paul Komski]

I now use BiNG to wipe partitions. You simply choose to delete any existing partitions and in the confirm deletion dialog put a check in the "Wipe Partition" box.

DBAN (http://dban.sourceforge.net/) is a simple-to-use utility that will wipe all hard drives in your system.