Erase Hard Drive

***NOTICE:  Following the steps below WILL ERASE all information on your hard drive.  Once the steps below are completed, you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO REVERSE the steps if you want to recover possible lost data.***

 

Erasing The Hard Drive:

Go to the appropriate OS below for instructions on how to erase the hard drive and re-install Windows.

Windows 8:

1. Press the “Windows” key plus the “C” key to open the “Charms” menu.
2. Select “Search”.  Type “reinstall” in the Search text field (Do NOT press “Enter”)
3. Select “Settings”.
4. On the left side of the screen, select “Remove Everything and Reinstall Windows”.
5. On the “Reset your PC” screen, click “Next”
6. On the “Do you want to fully clean your drive” screen, select “Just remove my files” to do a quick deletion of your personal files on the computer or select “Fully clean the drive” to have all files erased and overwritten several times with random data.
7. On the “Ready to reset your PC” screen, click “Reset”.

The hard drive will be erased, and Windows 8 will be re-installed.

Windows 7 and Vista:

1. Insert the Windows 7/Vista installation CD in the CD-Rom drive, and restart the computer.
2. When the “Press any key to boot from CD” screen comes up, press a key on the keyboard. (Here, pause to hear Homer Simpson say “Hey, where’s the any key?”)
3. When the “Windows Setup welcome screen” appears, click “Enter”.
4. When prompted, press any key on your keyboard.  (Just because it’s amusing, listen to Homer Simpson again).
5. On the “Install Windows” screen, select your preferred language and other personal preferences.  Once completed, click “Next”
6. On the “License Agreement” screen, read through the agreement, click “Accept” and click “Next”.
7. On the “Installation Type” screen, chose “Custom”.
8. Select “Drive Options (Advanced).
9. For Disk 0, delete all partitions.  When all partitions have been deleted, you should see a single entry named “Unallocated Space”.
10. Click “Disk 0” and select “Next”.

The Windows installation process will proceed with creating a new partition, formatting the partition, and installing Windows on the hard drive.

Windows XP

**Note:  Windows XP is no longer supported by it’s manufacturer.  We urgently recommend you upgrade, as this puts your computer and information, at a high security risk!**

1. Insert the Windows XP/2000 installation CD in the CD-Rom drive and restart the computer.
2. When you see the message “Press any key to boot from CD” screen comes up, press a key on the keyboard. (Here, pause to hear Homer Simpson say “Hey, where’s the any key?”).
3. Press “Enter” at the “Windows XP Setup” welcome screen.  Then press “F8 to accept the Terms and Agreements (after you’ve read them, of course).
4. Follow the on-screen instructions to select a hard drive partition to format and install Windows XP on.
5. After formatting the hard drive, erasing all data, click on one of the links below for steps on how to install Windows XP.

Microsoft Windows XP