formatting a hard disk with windows 95 installed 5

[bluemeyer]

I have an old computer with windows 95,and I want to completely erase or format the hard disk before donating it to a charity.How do I do this?

 

[micker377]

Look (Google) for a program called "killdisk". Wipes drive clean and overwrites drive with 0's. Once data is overwritten, cannot be read.

 

[edfair]

Or if you know the manufacturer, get the diagnostic disk and use the equivalent file from it. It may be called a low level formatter in the support documentation.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[billy71]

If you have the bootdisk or a windows 98 or ME bootdisk, boot up with it then at the A: prompt Enter C: then key format c: and answer Y this should format the Drive

 

[bluemeyer]

Thank you all for the valuable advice. However my old computer is not on line.So can I download this "killdisk" on this computer and copy it to a floppy to use on the old one.Also I have no diagnostic disks available.There does not seem to be a way to get to the C:\prompt.It always starts with windows 95,even the C: prompt is within the windows shell.Is there some way I can boot to Dos?

 

[edfair]

[F5] on bootup or [SHIFT}+[F8] to get to a choice menu. Or download one from

http://www.bootdisk.com

and kill with it.

Yeah, download it and put it on a bootable floppy.
You could also create a bootable floppy start, control panel, add/remove programs, startup disk , then boot with it and run fdisk and remove all partitions. Not as safe as the killdisk or lowlevel, but would require a program and some work to search out and restore the data.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[wolluf]

http://download2.lsoft.net/killdiskfloppysetup.exe

will create a bootable floppy from which you can run killdisk (assuming your machine is booting from a floppy - may need to change boot order in bios is it still boots from hard drive with floppy in). Killdisk will completely wipe the drive - so no original data can be recovered. Not sure if you need to go that far - or were happy just to fdisk or format (as per Ed's instructions).

 

[bluemeyer]

Thank-you all again. I have now formatted my computer hard disk. Now I want to re-install windows 95 which is all it can run with its limited Ram.I do not have a windows 95 disk.How can I do this?Or what would you suggest.I phoned my local computer store and he wants $100 to re-install windows 95 for me.What do you think?

 

[edfair]

I would suggest buying it off ebay.

If we had known you didn't have 95 and were going to attempt to reload it rather than donate it clean we would have gone about it another way.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[garebo]

You can always give it to the charity as is.
I do charity work and i receive computers, sometimes complete with os, sometimes complete without os, sometimes only partly complete, sometimes i just receive parts, motherboards, cdroms, ram, you name it. I also receive things like win 95 install disk with licence to install on a single computer.
So the charity may very well be able to take care of the win95 on its own. Pretty well all charities have someone who does all their computer work.
Also, you could get on some forums that buy, sell, and trade. You could get one for free if you pointed out it was for a charity.
I just started one myself where you could join and ask for a copy for free, and i know exactly who there would send you one! But i dont know if i can give my forum web address here, they may not allow that.
People like edfair would know if its ok. If not you could email me and i can give you the web address.
So you have a few options.




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