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!

All my documents are still there in My Documents and any extra apps I installed myself are still all there. I.e. when windows opens up you wouldn't know you'd done anything. It all looks the same.

Hi Taffston, When you re-install Windows Millennium, where are you finding your data still remains after the installation?

I tried both as neither were working! I'm booting from a CD though and from Windows this is labelled D:, and the floppy drive is labelled A:. However, I have no floppy disk to use with any of this.

Hi Taffston In Command Prompt are you at the A drive prompt or C drive prompt, if you are booting from the installation disk, the prompt should be A:>?

Maybe this is a stupid question, but could it be that it's looking for that function on A:, which I think is designated as a floppy drive, but I have nothing in there?

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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Anonymous

2021-07-14T14:20:38+00:00

All my documents are still there in My Documents and any extra apps I installed myself are still all there. I.e. when windows opens up you wouldn't know you'd done anything. It all looks the same.
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DaveM121 935.7K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2021-07-14T14:12:45+00:00

Hi Taffston,

When you re-install Windows Millennium, where are you finding your data still remains after the installation?
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Anonymous

2021-07-14T14:09:22+00:00

I tried both as neither were working!

I'm booting from a CD though and from Windows this is labelled D:, and the floppy drive is labelled A:. However, I have no floppy disk to use with any of this.
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DaveM121 935.7K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2021-07-14T13:57:22+00:00

Hi Taffston

In Command Prompt are you at the A drive prompt or C drive prompt, if you are booting from the installation disk, the prompt should be A:>?
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Anonymous

2021-07-14T13:52:15+00:00

Maybe this is a stupid question, but could it be that it's looking for that function on A:, which I think is designated as a floppy drive, but I have nothing in there?
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