Clearing a computer.

Hey guys, a friend of mine recently had a friend of his clear his computer for him. and its running pretty great. Im trying to learn how to do this. so far this is what i got. Theres a program called lifeguard that may be better then formatting your drive because it can actually set the drive to 000. before i clear it i need to make a boot disk… or two? or 3? idk little confused. so far the best site i got is this http://www.ehow.com/how_6026_format-hard-drive.html and its not that great. and to reinstall xp i need to buy a copy or find a OS recovery CD any information you can offer would help. thanks for your time.

what??? to format your hard drive boot into dos (win9*) or use boot disk (XP) and type format c: /s if you want to preserve system files

then if you're keen do it a few times to try and erase magnetic residue, though to do that you really need to either write your own or buy a program to write data randomly to the HD and erase it about 7 times.

Well, you can remove all milware, spyware, and not have 1000 things running at the same time. Update RAM.. 2 gigs are nice. Learn to read hijackthis

I suggest a site called: www.geekstogo.com

Good start! They have a G2GU

They teach you to help other people.

Well you can remove the partitions, which will make everything disappear. Then make new partitions, format them and voila, there you go.

And most computers today don't need a boot disk, you just boot directly from the CD.

I'm so sick of finding computers that need work and need a boot disk x-x My desktop fried and my laptop apparently is too good for a floppy drive… Not bothering to invest in a USB one… Not that far into geekdom yet.

Uber0n wrote: Well you can remove the partitions, which will make everything disappear. Then make new partitions, format them and voila, there you go.

Not true. :P The data is still there, and recoverable for another 31 complete writes over each bit.

But if you're really interested in speeding up your computer, the best advice is, "Don't install extra crud you don't need." Examples: AOL Toolbar, Google Toolbar, Toolbar Toolbar, Toolbar Generico, etc.

If it's an addon, find something that uses less space.

Use an alternative shell isntead of the default explorer.exe on Windows XP.

@tonzofgunz25>you're talking about zerofilling your harddisk.

the manufacturer of your harddisk,will have a program,to zerofill your disk. they will say you shouldn't do that.as it is NEVER needed. it's dangerous,for you drive.you shouldn't do that. there are apps,available,that WILL zerofill,and not format your drive. formatting=rearanging existing data,so,that it can be overwritten. a zerofill mean just that.your harddrive will be filled with 0's. so everything IS gone,and not recoverable.

it used to be called a low level format,and if i am right,some linux distro's have the tools to do it.

it is never needed,and very risky. don't attempt it. format,install you're favorite system,make an image,keep it clean. if it gets filled with crap,overwrite everything with your fresh made image.

peace.

darksun.

Zekasu wrote: Not true. :P The data is still there, and recoverable for another 31 complete writes over each bit.

But if you're really interested in speeding up your computer, the best advice is, "Don't install extra crud you don't need." Examples: AOL Toolbar, Google Toolbar, Toolbar Toolbar, Toolbar Generico, etc.

If it's an addon, find something that uses less space.

Use an alternative shell isntead of the default explorer.exe on Windows XP.

Lol of course I know the data is recoverable, I've even written an article on that subject ;) What I meant whas that the files won't be registred in the file allocation table anymore, since it will be romoved and a new one added. (Happy now? xD)

Zekasu wrote: But if you're really interested in speeding up your computer, the best advice is, "Don't install extra crud you don't need." Best way to speed up your computer.. delete windows, install Linux.

we made the boot disc in case their was a fatal crash (you have to be able to at least get your computer up and running again). We never needed the boot disc while we were erasing the hard drive but you never know. Making a boot disc is easy in windows, for XP just put in a floppy, go to my computer, right click on the A: drive and click format. there should be a check box that says "create a ms-dos start- up disc".

Now with my specific brand of hardrive (western) there is a program called lifeguard for data management. With this program you are able to write zero's to your hardrive (the data will not be recoverable).I dont know if this lifeguard will work for any other brand of hardrives besides western. Most hardrive companies will have a program like lifeguard that you can use, so look around a little bit.

What we did was, got my new OS UPGRADE (XP), had my old OS (ME) recovery CD ready, and had the boot disc and lifeguard ready. Now is the time that you would want to save any information that you absolutely need, although this is dangerous because you risk contamating your clean hardrive. Next we shut down the computer, inserted the floppy and turned it back on. The lifeguard program showed up on the screen. Then we told the program to write zeros to the hardrive, left it running overnnight, came back and the computer was off. When we turned the computer on it said "No OS detected". We inserted the Old OS recovery CD and installed ME. Then we installed the UPGRADE version of XP overtop.

I wouldn't suggest doing this by yourself… its a risky business. I had the computer tech at my dads office help me out.

DO NOT USE THIS AS A GUIDE TO WRITE ZEROS TO YOUR HARDRIVE, i'm just explaing what i did. This may not work for you so dont try it.

thanks for the info guys… austin01 i thought u sed you used a pencil and just wrote zeros on ur harddrive?

pretty sure that was you and nick that said that

cus thats prolly what you did.