Wipe Hard Drive (Virus Removal)

[dauntae]

how do i wipe my hardrive compltly, i want to install a completly new OS, i have lots of spyware/adware/viruses to kill

[stinger608]

Kill disk free! It takes quite awhile to clean the hard drive, but it writes 0's across the entire hard drive. Depending on the size of your hard drive, it can take up to a complete day to complete.

Here is the link to the download page:

Active@ Kill Disk. Hard Drives Eraser. Free Download.

As you can see, there are several options for downloading. You can download zip, or DOS versions, as well as an ISO to burn to a cd.

[One4yu2c]

Alternately, you can boot off your Windows disc, format your existing Windows partition, and reinstall Windows, saving a boatload of time in the process.

KillDisk and similar utilities are better suited for situations in which you're selling and/or trashing your hard drive, or any other situation where you want to ensure your data can't be easily recovered with undelete recovery utilities. The exception would be if you have a boot sector virus, which while far less common (these were most popular back in the floppy disk days), can evade formats.

[Reloadron]

I vote for Option #2. Set the BIOS to boot from your CD / DVD ROM. Pop the Windows disk in there and let it do its thing and format the HDD. When given the choice of a quick or full format I suggest choosing Full. Takes a little longer but makes a nice home for the new install.

Ron