removing Windows98

[RON STEVENS]

Hi,

I wish to donate my old computer to Goodwill. It has Windows98 installed.

I would like to know the easiest way to remove it from the computer. I don't wish to pass it on to the next user without removing programs that have my name listed as the owner.

Someone suggested to go to the C:/ directory and format the hard drive.

Does anyone have any suggestions.

Many thanks,

Ron
(e-mail address removed)

 

[John Barnett MVP]

Going to the C: directory isn't going to format the drive because you are using the operating system. It can't format the drive you are already using.

You can format the drive if you have a Windows 98 startup disk (which you should have). Just put the floppy into the floppy drive and reboot your machine. At the menu select 'with CD support' (i can't remember the exact words) this loads all the necessary files. At the DOS prompt A:/ type format C:

A message will appear saying everything will be destroyed. You must accept this for the format to proceed.

That's the easy bit. Formatting the drive just over writes what is on the drive, with the correct software the contents of the drive can be bought back. Obviously this software can be expensive and this is a 'might be' scenario. Just because a drive is formatted doesn't mean that someone in the know cannot ressurect file details that were previously on the hard drive. This information is not frightening tactics, i believe everyone should know this before parting with there PC.

If you don't have any bank details or other personal stuff then formatting will do the trick.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

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Hi,

I wish to donate my old computer to Goodwill. It has Windows98 installed.

I would like to know the easiest way to remove it from the computer. I don't wish to pass it on to the next user without removing programs that have my name listed as the owner.

Someone suggested to go to the C:/ directory and format the hard drive.

Does anyone have any suggestions.

Many thanks,

Ron
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I wish to donate my old computer to Goodwill. It has Windows98
installed.

I would like to know the easiest way to remove it from the computer.
I don't wish to pass it on to the next user without removing programs
that have my name listed as the owner.

Someone suggested to go to the C:/ directory and format the hard
drive.

You can format the drive, but you can't do it from Windows. You have to do
it by booting to a diskette.

Is that good enough? There is no simple answer. It depends on how paranoid
you want to be. Realize that no matter *what* you do, there is always a
remnant of what was written still present on the disk, and using
sophisticated techniques, a determined invader can sometimes recover it.For
that reason, the US government doesn't rely on any software techniques to
destroy really sensitive data, but physically melts the drive in a furnace.

Most of us don't need that kind of security. Depending on what is on the
drive, and recognizing that most people will neither know how, nor want to
bother trying, to recover any old data on the drive, a simple format is
sufficient for most people. And for the enormous majority of people a
zero-fill utility is more than sufficient. If it were me, I wouldn't go any
further than that, but only you know what is on the drive and how much
someone else might be interested in it.

If you want a zero-fill utility, there are several downloadable choices that
Google will find for you. There probably isn't any particular reason to
prefer one of them over the others.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Hi,

I wish to donate my old computer to Goodwill. It has Windows98 installed.

I would like to know the easiest way to remove it from the computer. I
don't wish to pass it on to the next user without removing programs that
have my name listed as the owner.

Someone suggested to go to the C:/ directory and format the hard drive.

Does anyone have any suggestions.

Many thanks,

Ron
(e-mail address removed) <mailto:[email protected]>

To protect your personal information and data from any future users
of average skills, you should, at the very least, format the hard drive.
If you wish to do a more thorough job of protecting your friend's
personal data, WipeDrive
(http://www.whitecanyon.com/wipedrive-erase-hard-drive.php) meets U.S.
DoD standards for securely cleaning surplus unclassified hard drives,
and could be used before formatting and reinstalling the OS and
applications.


--

Bruce Chambers

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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Andrew Murray]

Hi,

I wish to donate my old computer to Goodwill. It has Windows98 installed.

I would like to know the easiest way to remove it from the computer. I
don't wish to pass it on to the next user without removing programs that
have my name listed as the owner.

Someone suggested to go to the C:/ directory and format the hard drive.

Does anyone have any suggestions.

Many thanks,

Ron
(e-mail address removed)

Format the hard drive but not from C:\ itself since this is the drive you're
formatting, you will get an "drive is in use" error.

Boot from floppy disk or CD and run Format C: command.

 

[Paul Johnson]

Hi,

I wish to donate my old computer to Goodwill. It has Windows98 installed.

I would like to know the easiest way to remove it from the computer. I
don't wish to pass it on to the next user without removing programs that
have my name listed as the owner.

Someone suggested to go to the C:/ directory and format the hard drive.

Does anyone have any suggestions.

Best practice: Erase the disk back to it's factory-clean state.

Easiest method:

1. Go get Knoppix from http://www.knoppix.net/ and burn it to a CD.

2. Boot from Knoppix disk and wait until KDE loads.

3. Open up a Konsole (might take some digging around in the K menu).

4. At the $ prompt, type (without quotes) "sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=<HD
device>" where <HD device> is one of:

/dev/hda (primary master)
/dev/hdb (primary slave)
/dev/hdc (secondary master)
/dev/hdd (secondary slave)
/dev/hde (tertiary master)
etc...

If you use SATA or SCSI hard drives instead of the old-skool PATA drives,
replace hd? with sd? in that list.

The dd command will take a long time to complete, the time it takes to
complete depends on the speed and capacity of your hard drive. The
larger or slower the hard drive, the longer it will take.

Writing zeros to the drive is good enough for most people. If you're
a government type or really paranoid and need to erase it so there's
no hope of recovering anything remotely resembling data, use
/dev/urandom instead of /dev/zero (random bits instead of 0 bits, this
will take longer), and run it a half-dozen times or so.
IANAMilitaryL, but this should meet DoD data destruction standards.

Hope this helps!