Wiping a hard drive

[IG-88]

Hey all. I'm in need of some help. I have some old HD's that need wiped and have win xp pro installed on them. All have minor to major virus/spyware infestations, thus the complete cleaning.

My question(s), what would be the most efficient way of going about this. I'm not really familiar with boot disks, fdisking and formatting but I need to learn about it. Can anyone help?

[Rudi]

The easy way would be to boot with the WinXP CD, and when it asks you which partition to use you delete the existing one and recreate it.  Then it has a new and empty partition to use.

If that doesn't work you will have to create a DOS/Win98 boot floppy with  FDISK.  If you don't know how to make one, just ask and I can create an ISO image of one of mine and send it to you.

Rudi

[IG-88]

I've done the partition deletion thing and I don't think it's getting all the crap that's on some of these drives. For example even after deleting and re-partioning, I'm still getting pop-ups and "mysterious" icons showing up and I'm not even connected to the internet

[EndTwist]

I've done the partition deletion thing and I don't think it's getting all the crap that's on some of these drives. For example even after deleting and re-partioning, I'm still getting pop-ups and "mysterious" icons showing up and I'm not even connected to the internet 

I've found a basic tutorial,

http://www.compguysinc.com/techweb/fdisk/fdisk_run.shtml

on how to FDISK, Format, and Reinstall Windows 9x on a PC, but I guess I'm a little leery on wiping these HD's completely and then trying to put the XP back on them.

I guess I need some basic files on the boot disk like:

[SirPoonga]

well, you really want to wipe a hd get the tool from the hd manufacture.  It will have a low level format that will basical write 0s to every sector.

[IG-88]

I've done the partition deletion thing and I don't think it's getting all the crap that's on some of these drives. For example even after deleting and re-partioning, I'm still getting pop-ups and "mysterious" icons showing up and I'm not even connected to the internet

[JThw8]

Did you boot directly from the CD or did you boot from the HD and then put the CD in?  If you booted from the infected HD it may have written some of the viri/spyware to the memory to reinfect the HD once the install was completed.  Make sure you boot directly to the CD first.

[Thenasty]

have you tried a HAMMER yet 

[IG-88]

Did you boot directly from the CD or did you boot from the HD and then put the CD in?

[IG-88]

have you tried a HAMMER yet

[Silverwind]

http://www.killdisk.com/

This is what we use at work when we need to "wipe" the disk.  Usually we do this before we throw the system away or donate it.

If you just want to start over, just use format.com.
The windows XP CD can be used to boot your machine and erase disk contents prior to installation.

[AmericanDemon]

Here's another question for ya IG-88.  Is that a legit copy of XP or downloaded.  If its downloaded it could be preloaded with spyware.    Just food for thought.

[IG-88]

They are legit copies. I have several, although I've put them on LOTS of different systems

[AceTKK]

SirPoonga hit it on the head.  Go to the website of the drive's manufacturer and get their low-level formatting tool.  For Maxtor drives it's callled "MaxBlast", I'm not sure about other makes.  After running this (it takes a long time, depending on the size of the drive) the drive is totally wiped and ready for formatting.

-Ace-

[lokki]

Hi,
I don't think this is the issue, if the HD was repartition and reformatted there is no way for you to be still infected by virurues,etc.

My guess would be that you are not installing the XP sp2 and your computer is infected as soon as you connect to the Internet.

Do the repartition/re format. But make sure you install SP2 and all security hot fixes before hooking up to the Internet.

Good luck

[IG-88]

Thanks for the advice all...

lokki, I no hooki up to the internet. Just to avoid this problem. It's got to be the way I've reformatted or something. I'll get it figured out.