I'm hoping someone can help me out as I'm a little stuck. I have an old Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop running Windows ME. Me intention is to wipe the HDD so I can sell/recycle it safely, but I'm really stuck how to do this. Few extras: I have a floppy drive, but no floppy disks to create a startup disk (and I'm hoping that's not the only way) I have a "Reinstallation CD WMe" that came with the laptop, but I get the impression it's not something I can boot from. I could be wrong – if it was bootable I expected to be shown the option on startup. Any advice would be very welcome!

Hi Taffston, that's great, glad to help!

Thanks for all your support today Dave, really appreciate it. The format seems to have gone fine and I'm still in the process of re-installing ME. Hopefully on the home straight!

Hi Taffston, That's great, it really is, that will remove all data from the drive and you will then have a clean drive to re-install Windows Millennium onto.

Think I've got somewhere! I opened Windows and inspected the contents of the CD in my D: drive and spotted the system folder was called 'WIN9X'. I rebooted with CD support and landed in cmd again and this time tried: D: cd win9x format C: And it seems to be working! It's in the middle of reformatting now! Will let you know what happens

Hi Taffston Those should not survive a full clan install, and if you canget into Command prompt from the Installation media, this command should format your drive totally and remove all files: format C: /q I have just looked through all the screenshots you have provided and nowhere do I see the option to format the drive or to enter Command Prompt, this is very strange.

Wipe HDD & Re-Install Windows ME

Anonymous

I'm hoping someone can help me out as I'm a little stuck. I have an old Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop running Windows ME. Me intention is to wipe the HDD so I can sell/recycle it safely, but I'm really stuck how to do this.

Few extras:

I have a floppy drive, but no floppy disks to create a startup disk (and I'm hoping that's not the only way)
I have a "Reinstallation CD WMe" that came with the laptop, but I get the impression it's not something I can boot from. I could be wrong – if it was bootable I expected to be shown the option on startup.

Any advice would be very welcome!

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44 answers

DaveM121 936.1K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2021-07-14T16:42:01+00:00

Hi Taffston, that's great, glad to help!
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Anonymous

2021-07-14T16:38:29+00:00

Thanks for all your support today Dave, really appreciate it.

The format seems to have gone fine and I'm still in the process of re-installing ME. Hopefully on the home straight!
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DaveM121 936.1K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2021-07-14T14:57:53+00:00

Hi Taffston,

That's great, it really is, that will remove all data from the drive and you will then have a clean drive to re-install Windows Millennium onto.
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Anonymous

2021-07-14T14:47:32+00:00

Think I've got somewhere!

I opened Windows and inspected the contents of the CD in my D: drive and spotted the system folder was called 'WIN9X'. I rebooted with CD support and landed in cmd again and this time tried:

D:

cd win9x

format C:

And it seems to be working! It's in the middle of reformatting now!

Will let you know what happens
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DaveM121 936.1K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2021-07-14T14:35:36+00:00

Hi Taffston

Those should not survive a full clan install, and if you canget into Command prompt from the Installation media, this command should format your drive totally and remove all files:

format C: /q

I have just looked through all the screenshots you have provided and nowhere do I see the option to format the drive or to enter Command Prompt, this is very strange.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments