...prepare an old windows 2000 computer for the recycler?
It was time to empty the old boxes out of the closet. One has been repaved and has found a new home. The other is really just junk. I think purchased while there was a Democrat in the White House.
Rich eventually ihherited this computer and used it until last summer (when I snagged a great deal on Dell Outlet for him). Thanks to all of our security minded paranoia, I really wanted to format the drive. And being a bit of a pitbull, I wouldn't just leave it be. I basically blew the night doing this. But it was either that, the Emmy's or real work. This was my choice.
So how do you format C: anyway?
My method is generally booting from an XP install disk which will eventually get me to a format option. But, the computer has a CD ROM, not a DVD, and all of my XP discs are DVDs.
I created an DOS boot disc but couldn't format from there.
I tried just formatting C: from C:. No it doesn't work, but I have actually never tried that before so was curious to see what would happen. The answer is that it's smart enough not to let you do that accidentally. Or intentionally ... which got aggravating. But I think it's probably the right way to go on that one.
Finally I dug around and found an old Windows 2000 Release Candidate CD disk. What a funny thing to have sitting around (though I had to dig deep to discover it. I'm not really a packrat, but I do have my shining moments!).
I finally used that disk to do the deed. Now I can give the computer to Recycle North in Burlington for them to dissect any useful parts from and rest easy that nobody will scrounge Rich's shortcuts to the weather forecast, find old invoices to his clients or uncover the social security numbers of 50,000 people from the hard drive. Oh wait...we don't work for a government agency, so I don't think that's on the hard drive anyway. Phew!
Update: It seems that this problem exists with cell phones, too! Check out this CNN article.