Can't wipe hard drive, strange messages, help!

D

dustman

New Member
I am trying to wipe the hard drive of my Dell Dimension 3000 computer. I am using Stompsoft's Drive Washer. (I think this is Linux based software, and I've never had a problem with it before.)

It starts, and gives the error message: device i823650 does not have a release function, is broken and must be fixed." It then says NTLDR is missing. It will then boot the software, start to wipe the drive, and hang up permanently after a few seconds.

I have tried 5 different hard drives, and got the same message every time. On one, it also said "parameter out of range", indicating there may or may not be a problem with THAT hard drive.

What in the heck is this stuff? What is device i823650?

The computer was working perfectly before I went to wipe the hard drive. Sometimes it says "keyboard error". Keyboard is fine. I tried several others, all fine. But still, occasionally, "Keyboard error".

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dustman
 
Try booting the windows OS cd and formatting the hard drive. Once formatted then boot off the other cd to wipe again. Ntldr is a OS missing error.
 
Hello, BigRich0086 and The_Other_One, thanks for the responses, I really appreciate it.

I went to the Stompsoft website, and they actually said the device release function error message was bogus, and meant nothing, to just disregard it.

Why would they put something like that in a program for people to buy? I thought something was damaged, and I can't tell you how many places I went online trying to find out what it was and how to fix it. Really great for their customers, right?

Anyway, I tried to wipe the drive again,this time ignoring the stupid message, and it took like 4 hours to wipe a 120 GB hard drive. Then I went to install XP again, and believe it or not, it took nearly 18 HOURS!!

I actually left it running after nudging it along for over 4 hours last night, hoping it would be ok if I got XP on the disk.

When I got up this morning it was still loading! It finally loaded, but is running like molasses, 5+ minutes to boot, a minute or more to open any file, control panel, etc.

This is a fast computer, 3.0MHz, hyper-threading, over a gig of ram,120 GB HD, and nothing on the HD but the OS. This is nuts! What in the heck can be wrong?

I went into BIOS, everything seemed fine. Since both the Drive Washer program and XP took so long to load, is it more likely a problem with the hard drive or something in the computer itself? All was working perfectly and very quickly before.

Any ideas?

Thanks again,

Dustman
 
Obiously 5 hard drives can't be bad at the same time. You may have a bios setting wrong. Go into the bios and go to where it says load setup defaults and do that.
 
Hello, Johnb35,

Thanks for the post. you aren't going to believe this, but I have spent the last 3 hours looking all over the net for info on how to reset the bios on my Dell Dimension 3000.

I know what you mean about an option in the setup to reset to factory defaults, I have seen it many times on other computers I've had. Well, I went into setup and there is no such option in this Dell.

I saw lots of ideas online, the simplest being to remove the CMOS battery for X amount of time (varies by the poster), doesn't work, either.

The next was to change the jumpers on the cmos on the mobo, but guess what? None on this unit. (I went to Dell support, and it has a big diagram of the mobo, and the only item that is even close is the 3-pin password reset.

It seems there must be a way to do this, but I haven't done this in so long, I can't remember what it was. F8 key doesn't do anything either. I get responses to F1 (retry), or F2 (enter setup). What am I missing here?

Thanks again for your help.

Dustman
 
First, unplug the power cord from the power supply, then remove the cmos battery and then press and hold the power button for 10 seconds or so to let it actually discharge the capacitors. Give it a minute or so and then put the battery back in and reconnect power. Turn computer on and see what happens.
 
It worked! It worked! I can't thank you enough!!

What would have caused it to mess up in the first place? Any ideas?

I have written down your instructions for future reference.

Thank you so very much! It must be good to know so much about computers. The one thing I have learned over the years is that a computer can bring you to your knees in a heart-beat! (At least ME it can! LOL)

Thanks again, you're a life-saver,

Dustman
 
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