Hard Drive erasing.

[Huey]

I am going to erase my hard drive using a drive wiper program. I've put
the disk wiper on the floppy disk, everything is ready to go. (I know
what to do)

If my hard drive is erased, I know I'll need to reinstall Windows XP
(and all my other programs). But what about the screen that shows up
before the Windows XP boot window? I'm assuming this is the BIOS
screen, but I'm not sure. Will that be erased?

It says something along the lines of

Sata 378

Detecting...
IDE Bus Master Enabled

then the Windows boot shows up.

 

[philo]

I am going to erase my hard drive using a drive wiper program. I've put
the disk wiper on the floppy disk, everything is ready to go. (I know
what to do)

If my hard drive is erased, I know I'll need to reinstall Windows XP
(and all my other programs). But what about the screen that shows up
before the Windows XP boot window? I'm assuming this is the BIOS
screen, but I'm not sure. Will that be erased?

No, that won't erase your bios

However....you do not need to use a drive wiper to erase your disk

just boot with the XP cd and you will be given an option to format the drive
prior to perfoming a fresh install

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I am going to erase my hard drive using a drive wiper program. I've
put the disk wiper on the floppy disk, everything is ready to go. (I
know what to do)

No, no need to do that at all. Read below.

If my hard drive is erased, I know I'll need to reinstall Windows XP
(and all my other programs).

If that's your intent, simply boot from the Windows XP CD (change the BIOS
boot order if necessary to accomplish this) and follow the prompts for a
clean installation (delete the existing partition by pressing "D" when
prompted, then create a new one).

You can find detailed instructions here:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

or here http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_install_windows_xp.htm

or here http://windowsxp.mvps.org/XPClean.htm

or here http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

But what about the screen that shows up
before the Windows XP boot window? I'm assuming this is the BIOS
screen, but I'm not sure. Will that be erased?

Yes, that comes from the BIOS, and not from the hard drive. No, that won't
be erased whether you run the drive wiper program or just reinstall Windows
correctly, as I explained above.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I am going to erase my hard drive using a drive wiper program. I've put
the disk wiper on the floppy disk, everything is ready to go. (I know
what to do)

If my hard drive is erased, I know I'll need to reinstall Windows XP
(and all my other programs). But what about the screen that shows up
before the Windows XP boot window? I'm assuming this is the BIOS
screen, but I'm not sure. Will that be erased?

How could it be? The BIOS isn't on the hard drive, it's on a chip
built onto the motherboard.





--

Bruce Chambers

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[Huey]

I was saying that if that was part of the BIOS, then I knew it wouldn't
be erased, if I didn't make that clear. And there is a very specific
reason I'm not just using the default Windows reinstallation.

Thank you for all your help guys, you helped me make the situation more
clear.

 

[Huey]

I was saying that if that was part of the BIOS, then I knew it wouldn't
be erased, if I didn't make that clear. And there is a very specific
reason I'm not just using the default Windows reinstallation.

Thank you for all your help guys.

 

[Matt]

No, no need to do that at all. Read below.

That depends on what exactly he is planning to do with the computer, if
it his intention to sell the machine on to a third party then securely
wiping the hard drive is a sensible step to take and reinstalling the OS
would be a courtesy to whoever he is selling it to.