I implore the teeming millions and all the data-guru’s!!
I am tinkering with an old gateway I have laying around. I know I know gateway’s suck, but I am giving it to a friend as she has no computer and for her needs it’s fine. I have a few Q’s:
How do I erase the hard drive to make it completely empty?
It’s running Windows 95 and I want to put 2000 on it. How do I do that?
Do I just pluck the 2000 CD’s in and go through the motions. I have ton’s of memory that I am going to stick in it…
Can anyone help?? I just want to make it like new…Can I do that?
Boot to CD (if you can’t, there’s a boot disk maker on the Win2000 CD)(boot to CD by oging to the Bios (F11 at startup or something. It should say how to get there at startup))
After booting to the CD, follow the prompts, it’ll do it for you.
It depends. If your Windows 2000 CD is an upgrade version, then do it EvilHamsterOnCrack’s method will work fine. Howver if it’s a full install version, you’ll need to format it first. The easiest way is to make a boot disk from the DOS prompt. Put in your blank floopy and type SYS A: then copy FORMAT.COM to it, as well as CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. Boot from it and type FORMAT C: /T. The boot from and use the Win 2k CD to do the install. If your machine doesn’t support boot from a CD rom, you’ll need to install CD-ROM drive support on your boot floppy as well and boot from that.
Not if you’re installing a full version Windows product. If Setup smells an old OS, it throws a hissy fit and won’t let you install. I always use the /T switch, because it tests clusters marked bad and attempts to recover them. Good to use on older hard drives
My .02.
Boot to a Win98 setup floppy.
Run Fdisk
(normally here I also reboot to floppy and format the drive from the 98 floppy but it’s not required, just the way I do things.)
Reboot to cd
Install 2000
If you format a hard disk from a win98 floppy with the /s switch you’ll have 98 system files on track 0. No biggie, just FYI. I just format with no switch but since I’ve learned something today from [Q.E.D] I’m gonna see what /t works like. Always something to learn from [Q.E.D.]
Others have answered the installation part, but how serious are you about erasing the data? If you just want to remove the data from casual inspection, then a simple FDisk and Format will do the trick. For deeper erasure there are utilities available on the Net which write garbage all over the disk. If the data had business-critical info on it and discovery of same would cause problems, then your best option is a sledgehammer.
Presumably you simply want to erase your extensive porn collection so the second option will suffice.
I just posted a question on purging harddrives without seeing this one… I went back to the board and saw this, thinking mine had gotten several answers in less than a minute…
Whoa!! hold on there guys, my computer acumen is vastly under the common norm on these boards… I am here strictly for intellectual purposes… I mean come on now, I get paid to dig in the dirt and tell people the date of what I dig up… I may be able to tell you David the Bruce was a homosexual as well, but I do not know that much about computers. Lets see if I get what you are saying…
My Windows CD is is full monty, it is not just the upgrade. The CPU in question here is currently running Win95… I am wanting to erase whats on the hard drive and install Win2000.
What is an Fdisk and Format?? I am not worried about my friend - happens to be the brides maid at my upcoming nuptual - seeing anything that used to be on the computer. The hardcore porn was all deleted when accidently installed WINXP over my Millennium Edition without backing anything up.
So how do I get to the DOS menu, thats in my start-up menu right - see I’m a veritable Kindergardner!
How do I copy FORMAT.COM onto the disk?
Once I have copied everything I put the disk in and restart the computer? Then put the WIN2K CD in and the rest will fall into place? Am I making Mt.Everest out of a mole-hill?
No, handy windows 95 will not put all those on on a system disk for you. All Make System Disk will do is write a bootable boot record, copy the hidden suystem files IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS, and copy thge command interpreter COMMAND.COM.
The easiest way to get those files is to use Wondows’ Find utility on the start menu. Search for any one of them, and then go to the foler it finds them in. They’ll all be there toether. If your on a Windows 95 system, it should be a folder called C:\Windows\Olddos, IIRC.
In a Win200 installation, somwhere along the way you’ll be asked which hard drive to install it on. The program will ask “Do you want to install Win2000 to the current partition?” You’ll be given an option at this time to delete the current partition, then create a new partition (maximum size) and install Win2000 to it. Additional time investment is two minutes, tops.
Don’t worry about what “partition” means, just be damn sure there’s nothing on the hard drive you want to keep because this step will obliterate it.
Fine, but that’s still an incomplete answer, since Win 95 won’t won’t include support for the CD-ROM drive, which the OP probably needs, since the BIOS likely won’t provide firmware support. Se here for information on creating a startup disk with CD-ROM drive support.
so the second option will suffice.