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, Okay, try running this command instead of diskpart: format c:

Good point. On startup up BIOS is giving me the option each time to boot from HDD or CD-ROM, and I've been selecting CD-ROM and then select the option to enter command prompt straight after that step. So perhaps that's why. I can't work out any way of booting into command prompt without selecting this option. I tried hitting F10 at start but no joy. Nothing in BIOS that I can see that helps me.

No, I'm definitely in command prompt now from restart and getting "Bad command or file name" when entering "diskpart"

Hi Taffston, Another approach may be to install Windows millennium, then create a new user profile and delete the old profile that contains your personal files.

Going to try again to enter command prompt after restart. I don't know what this is that I'm looking at (it looks exactly like cmd), but something's not right. Maybe when exiting the installer it takes you somewhere 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!

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

44 answers

DaveM121 935.7K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2021-07-14T12:03:23+00:00

Hi Taffston,

Okay, try running this command instead of diskpart:

format c:
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2021-07-14T12:02:14+00:00

Good point. On startup up BIOS is giving me the option each time to boot from HDD or CD-ROM, and I've been selecting CD-ROM and then select the option to enter command prompt straight after that step. So perhaps that's why. I can't work out any way of booting into command prompt without selecting this option.

I tried hitting F10 at start but no joy. Nothing in BIOS that I can see that helps me.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2021-07-14T11:57:39+00:00

No, I'm definitely in command prompt now from restart and getting "Bad command or file name" when entering "diskpart"
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
DaveM121 935.7K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2021-07-14T11:56:56+00:00

Hi Taffston,

Another approach may be to install Windows millennium, then create a new user profile and delete the old profile that contains your personal files.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2021-07-14T11:54:05+00:00

Going to try again to enter command prompt after restart. I don't know what this is that I'm looking at (it looks exactly like cmd), but something's not right. Maybe when exiting the installer it takes you somewhere strange.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments