I need to wipe an old laptop (one pass, all zeros will do).
The laptop is ancient and has:
- Windows XP Professional installed as its sole os.
- no USB boot support
- no working CD drive
- no hammer/drill
I have nothing else to use with it, no external CD drive etc (not that that would work anyway, as the bios doesn't load USB drivers). So, just the laptop. It is connected to the Internet, and I'm familiar with technical operations, so don't be shy!
Basically, I need something that work similarly to EASEUS PARTITION MASTER, where I can install it on the laptop, in Windows xp. Tell it to wipe the laptop, and then on restart it boots in to its own command line temporary partition and gets the job done.
Any ideas?
Answer
I have tried this a number of times with success on old systems without USB boot support.
(Or to boot a VirtualBox VM with a USB stick. VirtualBox doesn't normally do USB boot either.)
Get a copy of Plop Boot Manager
Install it to the MBR.
Reboot.
Inside the boot manager you can select a USB drive to continue booting from, even if the system doesn't have USB boot support
So you just can pop in a USB stick with GParted, DBAN or whatever else you want to use to wipe the HD.
Read the documentation first. The thing isn't made for the average user.
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