Clearing Harddrive

O

Oblivion

New Member
Hey guys i am working on my friends Toshiba satellite M55 laptop, he asked me to just wipe the hard drive because he had some virus' like zlog trojen downloaded and things (he had 7 of them). So i reinstalled windows thinking that would wipe the things clean but i guess i was wrong. I have re-installed windows on many computers before and this has never happened. I am wondering if you guys know what to do, so that i just just wipe it clean.

P.S. it didn't delete anything after i reinstalled windows the first time (i have tried to do it 3 times and still same result) the hard drive was full, so it don't believe it is even deleting anything
 
Without the preinstalled OS after the drive is wiped your friend will need a full version copy of Windows. You can use one of several retail drive partitioning tools, GParted live for cd(free Linux version of the Gnome Partition Editor), or a floppy tool provided by the drive's own manufacturer like Western Digital or Seagate for this. One of those will remove everything in one shot seeing the need to create a new primary partition for a clean copy of Windows to go onto.
 
are there any free ones? i dont know that i want to buy one just to create one partition, install windows and then delete the old partition. and which one is the most recommended?
 
Oblivion said:
Hey guys i am working on my friends Toshiba satellite M55 laptop, he asked me to just wipe the hard drive because he had some virus' like zlog trojen downloaded and things (he had 7 of them). So i reinstalled windows thinking that would wipe the things clean but i guess i was wrong. I have re-installed windows on many computers before and this has never happened. I am wondering if you guys know what to do, so that i just just wipe it clean.

P.S. it didn't delete anything after i reinstalled windows the first time (i have tried to do it 3 times and still same result) the hard drive was full, so it don't believe it is even deleting anything
Click to expand...

Does he have a XP cd, if he does just boot to it, delete the partition, create a new partition/format and do a clean install.
 
well i have tried but weirdly enough it wont let me create a new one, its really lame and i dont know why, maybe something to do with the virus?!?!
 
Once you boot from any removable media no virus on a hard drive can effect what you do there. GParted is a free partitioning tool. There are two things needed besides the download to see the 35mb iso image burned to a cd-r to make it a bootable disk. The first is the obvious namely a cd or dvd burner. The second is a program like BurnOn(also has a free version) that can actually burn that type of disk image onto removable media.

The Gnome Partition Editor 0.3 as it appears when booting with the actual disk but 0.3.3.0 "platform independent" version found at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828 will easily delete and create new primary or extended partitions for a replacement. The XP installed will then ask if you want it formatted when going to install a new copy of Windows on it. That will easily take care of any viruses, trojans, spybots, adwares, etc..

gparted0330ee6.jpg
 
Deleting a partion and reinstalling does not actually delete anything. All the files are still there technically.
 
Have you ever zero filled a drive? No data recovery possible there since binary zeros eliminate traces. But plan on spending a week or so for a 500gb sata! It literally took about 8hrs. some years back for a 13gb drive with a dos tool for that.

Active KillDisk is one program for speeding things up quite a bit by seeing the tool repeatedly overwrite anything on a drive. But for viruses and other things having a working partition and an OS to infect is crutial for them to do harm. Trojans, viruses, and other malwares are still programming to an extent.
 
If something nasty has found its way to the mbr, this needs to be rewritten also to be sure. Just repartitioning and formatting doesn't do it
 
The mbr is found in the first 100mb or so of the first active primary on a drive. Once you remove a primary any boot information goes with it. Malwares don't go after the mbr but what that loads in order to cause problems. A different versions of Windows being installed will rewrite that unless a specific intent is directed there specifically. When you create a new primary and OS it you also create new mbr along with the other boot and partition information.
 
the mbr is actually located in the very first 512 bytes on the disk. the program code in mbr is not associated with any partitions, so just touching the partition table won't make any changes to the code.

ever tried installing a windows on top of a linux, and finding out that you need to manually write a new mbr?
 
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