Reformat hard drive Win 98

[disptchr]

Have an old computer that I am giving away, want to get rid of all my info on it so I thought a reformat is in order. Can't remember how to reformat in Win98. Not sure if I still have the disks.

[TwoRails]

One way is to make a Win98 boot floppy disk and copy format.exe to the floppy. Boot from that and format the hard drive. You will not be able to boot from the hard drive after that. One step better, though, would be to zero fill the drive after you're done.

[GaryRouth]

. . . Rails mentioned the zero-fill --> this is a good idea if you are giving the computer away to a charity, where the end user is unknown. Data Recovery programs could otherwise still recover data from the drive, sometimes even after using a command like "format". If you've had sensitive personal or financial records on the computer, a zero-fill is your best option for complete privacy [no data can survive a zero-fill --> which literally writes nothing but zeroes to the drive until it's completely full of them! = completely blank!]. To perform a zero-fill, the easiest option is to go to the website of the company that manufactured the hard drive - and download the disk diagnostics tool. These usually have a "zero-fill", "zero-write", or "write zeroes to the drive" (the exact wording varies) among the diagnostics.

If you have Recovery Disks, you can run those after the zero-write to restore the drive to the same state it was in when it arrived home from the store. Such a restore is usually called a "complete" restore (some disks have options for less extensive recovery). Recovery Disk restores usually work quite well, as long as the major components of the computer are still the original parts. Such Recovery Disks are a bit more problematic with major changes (different motherboard & cpu than the original, for example) - but often can be eventually made to work with some effort.

The nice thing for whoever receives the computer after a Recovery Disk, is that it contains all the original programs ready-to-go. One favor you can do before donating it - is to put a freeware antivirus & firewall on it, and go to Windows Update and get the computer up-to-date with the Security patches.

If you have a Windows 98 CD, rather than a Recovery set, simply install it as a fresh install, using the original product key. If you don't know the key, or can't find it --> then BEFORE you erase the drive or reformat, go to the Start/Run box, enter "regedit" without the quotes (this is the Registry Editor), and go to HKEY_Local_Machine/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version . . . and click on "Current Version" to select it: in the window pane to the right there will be an item "ProductKey" with a value of five sets of five characters separated by dashes -- that's your product key.

If the machine is running OK now, and you're giving it to a trusted family member, or you don't have any sensitive information on it, of course you can just remove a few things & your done.

If you'll be reinstalling a fresh install using just a Windows 98 CD, you may want to make a note of all the current hardware & drivers - to help in your reinstall. I believe there's a freeware/shareware program somewhere that offers to find & save your current drivers for you (I'll be darned if I can remember it's name at the moment - but one of the other techs might remember).

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[. . . & Hi there, Rails! ]

[disptchr]

Thank you for all the information, I was wondering what the heck zero fill was (lol). Followed your instructions and everything worked great.

1 question, what the heck you doing up at 12:54 a.m. (lol again)