Reformatting Windows 98 For A New User

[runswithscissors]

I'm getting ready to donate my old PC to some lucky unsuspect, and would like to know the best way to go about reformatting the harddrive and wiping out my info.

I'm hesitant to do any registry cleaning, because I've done this before, and I was very sad afterwards.

I've already removed all the important surfacey things, but was wondering if there is any other advice?

[KGIII]

DBAN...

* KGIII goes to find you a link.

Darik's Boot and Nuke (Hard Drive Disk Wipe):
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Then, when done, if you are legally allowed to (you probably are unless you have installed it on another PC), give 'em the hardware and the disks that went with it including the OS.

[runswithscissors]

Thanks!

Now to get that over to the PC, and then wipe it clean.

And yes, I still have all the original hardware and such that I can legally give to them. I've been the only owner of the PC, and I'm pretty sure this particular OS has never been installed anywhere else.

[runswithscissors]

Hehe.

Cool.

You totally get a gold star for that one.

[KGIII]

Burn the image to CD, boot to CD, and wipe. You may need to enter setup (as the PC is booting - probably the DELETE or ESC key) otherwise often erroniously called BIOS (it is really CMOS but if I said CMOS people would just look at me funny) and make it boot to CD if it doesn't already do so but, well, it probably does already do so. You could also just use a floppy drive if you had access to a floppy drive on the PC you are now using or you could just use the boot floppy (if it doesn't boot to CD) to enable booting with CD ROM support. All sorts of fun ways to get where you're going.

[runswithscissors]

LOL!

It's 87.35% done wiping as we speak.

I simply burned the .exe to a cd on my laptop here, uploaded it to the PC, then copied the boot disk info onto a floppy and rebooted the old computer.

Great fun. I love to watch it wipe away years of my madness. LOL!

[KGIII]

And hope like hell you saved everything important?

[runswithscissors]

LOL... oh, I did. I've been working on this little "project" for months. There's absolutely nothing left on the PC that I want.

Well, quite literally now, as it's almost done wiping.

[KGIII]

*chuckles* Well if there was and you have run DBAN, well, it surely is gone now. I've thought about modifying the boot sector and making it start DBAN on a failed login attempt on my laptops but then I realized how often I type while drinking and how utterly retarded that would be.

[runswithscissors]

Oh gods, no! Don't do that!

lmao

[runswithscissors]

Ah, it's done.

I bought this PC in October '99 as a b-day present to myself.

*sighs*

I'M GONNA MISS YOU, BESSIE!

[KGIII]

*solved and locked*

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