I tried searching through the past posts for this answer and did not find one, so here goes:

I am sending a Dell lease laptop back to Dell and I would like to clean and erase everything off the drives. There is nothing criminal, we used this as an office laptop so there are personnel and payroll, taxes, and sensitive stull like that on the system. I BELIEVE I have all of the data backed up and off. I have ALSO made a print screen with date hack on the Cdrive and desktop showing Dell that the system is and was completetly functional prior to and up to the time of the cleaning the HD.

I see that upon opening My computer then going to the C drive and right clicking, I have the option to format then it gives a couple of different examples ie. fat 32 or nfts etc.

Can someone please give me the final instructions for cleaning or erasing this drive.

ThanksI don't think Format will proceed regardless of which file system you select because you'd be ASKING your Operating System to commit hara kiri and it won't do that.

Do you have a bootable XP disk from which you could format the hard drive?

There are third party programs (such as Killdisk) which will delete the contents of your hdd, and others (such as Window Washer) which will write ZEROS to unused space on your hdd, the latter to be run after deleting all data files.

Hi,

use Windows XP(Not SP2) disk for reformating. And once Winodws Xp is installed then use Win XP Sp2 to in upgrade mode to upgrade.


My XP SP2 cd isnt bootable. BUt my XP disc is bootable. This method worked for me a couple of days back.


Make sure u select the default booting device as ur CD drive from Windows Setup.

hope this helps
ThanksThank you both very much..........