Wipe HDD & Re-Install Windows ME

Anonymous
2021-07-14T08:09:11+00:00

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!

Windows for home | Other | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-07-14T13:26:03+00:00

    Still no joy unfortunately, I get the same "Bad command..." message when trying "format c:".

    I think my replies are being stopped by the forum anti-spam measures or something because I keep getting "Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again." error messages when trying to reply to your posts! I guess I'm replying too often or something.

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  2. 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:

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  3. 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.

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  4. 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"

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  5. 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.

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