asked on

Complete clear down of laptop with Safeboot

I have in my posession a good laptop I used when working for another company a couple of years ago. I'd completely forgotton that I even had it until my wife found it whilst tidying some kitchen cupboards out last weekend. Problem is I can't use it as it has safeboot installed and I can't remember the password.

Now I'm not interested in the data and I have reinstalled windows XP Pro and in the process opted to format the harddisk. However, safeboot is still hanging in there and now won't even let me boot the computer and complaining about installation corruption. Is this possible to resolve this and remove safeboot? If so how?

All suggestion welcome

Regards

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Kelvin_King

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Kelvin_King

Another way if you don't have a CD rom in your notebook, is to connect it as a secondary drive into another PC.

Then you can use something like HDD wipe tool to wipe it clean:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.04.13-HDD-Wipe-Tool/

You'll need a 2.5" SATA/IDE connector though.

Which ever option is more avaliable to you will work just as well.

Hope that helps
- Kelvin

SOLUTION

McKnife

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Kelvin_King

Yes. Disk Part can clear the MBR using the clean all command.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766465.aspx

clean
clean [all]
Removes any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk with focus. On master boot record (MBR) disks, only the MBR partitioning information and hidden sector information are overwritten. On GUID partition table (GPT) disks, the GPT partitioning information, including the Protective MBR, is overwritten; there is no hidden sector information.
all
Specifies that each and every sector on the disk is zeroed, which completely deletes all data contained on the disk.

Some Win XP CD's (the OEMs) don't have a recovery console. So, I advice him to do a check first before creting the boot CD. of course, if his Win XP CD have the recovery console, then that's the fastest way to do it.

- Kelvin

SOLUTION

mdktch

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Kelvin_King

If you do not have DiskPart in your WinXP CD, then you'll need to make a bootable CD which contains a version of DiskPart.

Fortunately, something like that is avaliable, it's called "The Ultimate Boot CD":
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

I think the instructions are pretty straight forward, download a copy of the .ISO image here:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html

And burn it into a CD.

If you don't have a CD burner, then you could get a prepared copy (for a small fee):
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/physical.html

Hope that helps
- Kelvin

Moorhouses

Works