Phil Wright said:
i have a harddisk with windows xp on it... but it also appears to have
MSBLAST. or similar... which doesnt allow me to run windows, but also
prevents me from reinstaling/reformating winXP
It encounters problems whilst checking for existing windows...
How can i remove the remaining information that is on the harddrive, so
that
i can reformat from scratch?
Carey Frisch responds...
Download the free thirty day trial version of DriveScrubber,
use it, then perform a "clean install" of Windows XP.
DriveScrubber
http://www.iolo.com/ds/index.cfm
Clean Install Windows XP
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups
Be Smart! Protect Your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/default.mspx
And from Rick Rogers...
MSBlast would not prevent you from formatting and clean installing your
system. It only shuts you down *while* windows is running. All you should
have to do is boot from the CD and run the format/clean install from there
(a repair install will not be sufficient to remove this bug, but there are
better methods than resorting to a format and clean installation as well).
--
Best of Luck,
Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone
Windows help -
www.rickrogers.org
Phil:
Your instinct is absolutely correct. These third-party "drive overlay"
programs from the hard drive manufacturers are curses. Anyone who has worked
with problem PCs over the years will attest to that, I can assure you. Their
basic problem is that they introduce proprietary information/commands on the
drive that are nearly sure to rise up and bite you by-and-by. At one time in
the "pre-historic" years of PCs there may have been good & sufficient
reasons to use these types of programs to overcome this or that limitation
of a particular OS and/or hard drive. But those days are long gone for
nearly all of us working with the systems that have been in use now for a
good many years.
The program we've been using for a number of years to "purge" one's HD is
zap.com. It's a DOS software utility that writes zeroes to the first 128
sectors on a HD drive, including the Master Boot Record and the first
Partition Boot Record. It can be used with both SCSI and IDE drives. (I
assume it will work with a SATA drive but I can't recall using zap to zap a
SATA drive). It's an effective tool for eliminating those dreadful drive
overlay programs offered by the hard drive manufacturers as well as being
effective in purging the MBR of any virus infestation, should that be an
issue. And it does its job in an instant.
The program was originally available from IBM; however AFAIK it is no longer
offered by IBM'S HD successor, Hitachi. However, the zap.exe file that
creates zap.com can be downloaded from
http://www.tburke.net/info/utils
After running the executable file, two files will be created - zap.com and
zap.txt, the latter file describing the program and its use. Since zap is
designed to work from a DOS environment, the two files (they total about 4
KB) are then copied to a bootable floppy, e.g., a Win9x/Me startup disk.
Using zap is simplicity itself. At the A:\ prompt you invoke the zap command
together with the hard disk number, e.g., zap 0. After a confirmation
message and executing the command, the drive will be "zapped" in a moment or
two.
UNDERSTAND THAT AFTER USING ZAP, ALL DATA ON THE HARD DRIVE IS, FOR ALL
PRACTICAL PURPOSES, UNRECOVERABLE. Following zap, the hard drive is returned
to a state ready to be partitioned & formatted.
I've never worked with the DriveScrubber program Carey recommends. It may do
the job just as well as zap. There are a number of other programs out there
that also perform the same function as zap, however, I cannot speak to them
since my experience has been with the zap program.
Anna
