how to wipe the hard-drive?

[Mike Webb]

I have an old PII 233 MHZ PC I want to install SCT (shared computer toolkit)
on for recreational use by the college kids who work for us on projects
during the year. SCT requires 2 partitions to work. No problem - I was
able to do this easily with a PIII a few weeks ago by using a utility called
DBAN v1.04 ("boot and nuke") so I could start from scratch. For some reason
it won't work this time. I've also tried to do a fresh re-install of XP -
but can't get it to let me create a new partition from the main C:\. Tried
to find a wipe-disk utility (freeware) on the 'net, but couldn't find a true
"wipe disk" utility.

Any ideas?

 

[Squire]

Mike, did you boot with the XP CD installed or just try to do it from the CD
drive ?

 

[Mike Webb]

CD installed. I went into Setup during bootup so I could set the CD drive
as part of the boot sequence - much to my surprise, it wasn't listed - just
Floppy, Hard Drive, Network, and Disabled. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have
this problem if it weren't for this.

Mike

 

[Squire]

You might think about upgrading the Bios, either by Flash or Replacement,
It usually runs about 20 dollars.

 

[Mike Webb]

Hadn't thought of that. It's an old Dell box. Any chance they'd have a
download for the BIOS I can put on a floppy?

Mike

 

[Mike Webb]

Found a Flash BIOS update on Dell's website. BIOS Version A03. TRied to
install it, but got the message that it was trying to load the OS, to remove
the diskette. Can't get around it, so will finish the OS re-load and THEN
try the BIOS Flash update.

Mike

 

[Mike Webb]

Have run into a very frustrating problem - can't update the BIOS by Flash.
I've tried just about all the BIOS versions for XPS's - most tell me
"incompatible SMBIOS table". I then tried to find the latest version of
BIOS for an XPS H233 via Google, seems the A01 version is it. TRied it,
too, and got a DOS message that it was too big to run in memory (300+
kilobytes).

I've tried different floppies (hard to find in an office these days), same
result. Even made the disks MS-DOS bootable dueing format (had to,
otherwise the screen said OS loading, remove media and reboot). Nothing
works. Short of buying physical BIOS, what else can I do?

Mike

 

[Squire]

I can't think of anything at the moment, short of buying the BIOS chip.

--
Jerry

One thing money can't buy,
The wagging tail of a dog

<Snip>