Windows 2000 - total cleaning without CD or floppy - is it..

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.general (More info?)

"Scott M." <Scott M.@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:36BB5684-9CFF-4833-809A-1C1578947C6F@microsoft.com...
>I have a Compaq Deskpro that I am giving to someone else. However, I need
>to
> completely de-partition and delete EVERYTHING that is on the hard drives.
>
> However, the CD-ROM drive is not functioning (now you know why I'm giving
> it
> away) and the BOOT setup does not give me the floppy drive as an available
> boot drive?
>
> Is there any other way to zap the 2 physical hard drives without booting
> to
> floppy or CD?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>

Unless you can boot from something besides the hard drives, you can't run
any utilities on them to wipe them out - you'd essentially be asking the
disk to commit suicide. You could put the disks in another machine and do
whatever level of format / wipe you wished.

That said, check the BIOS to see whether you can change the boot sequence /
include the floppy in the boot sequence. I'd be amazed if you couldn't do
this.

Or, you might be able to boot from a USB floppy, depending on the
motherboard/BIOS.