[ought-six]

Sh!tcan your machine and get something that does not run Windows.

[TomGuy]

If you are going to install a newer version of Windows from disk, it can format the entire drive.

Also, there are numerous ‘free’ tools. Google ‘freeware remove partition’.

[Paladin2]

Take it to the range.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk

[KoRn]

I’d boot to a ‘Live CD’ of some kind. There are many to choose from. List the partitions, delete the ones you want gone, and just format the disk. It’s not a total ‘wipe’, but unless you have some sort of super sensitive data, who cares. (if that was the case, I’d physically destroy the drive unless I intended to reuse it)

[kjam22]

I bought a new Dell laptop with Windows 8 on it for $240. (don’t listen to the windows 8 haters... its okay). You’ll be way ahead to replace the old machine. You can’t beat the price.

[e_castillo]

If you want to erase all your data thouroughly then you need to boot from another deivce. If you want to install another OS on the same system then the boot disk of the new OS should have the utility for the deletion/creation of partitions.

[Calvin Locke]

My guess is that something is using the swap file on it, or a temporary file.

Go with the Live CD, Windows Boot/Install, or if your have another PC that can handle it, move over and format it there.

If you have any friends that might loan you a Rosewill adapter...

[kjam22]

Its an old xp machine. Buy some new windows machine that fits your need. Spend $30 bucks on an enclosure and install the old hard drive from the old machine in the enclosure. Your new machine will be able to usb and read all of the files on your old machine like it was an external hard drive bought for that purpose. Put the enclosure in a safe place for safe keeping... and then enjoy the new machine. You’ll be way ahead.

[FredZarguna]

The best thing to do is this. Download YUMI, or some other USB multi-boot utility. The thing I like about YUMI is that it will automatically put whatever bootable OS's you want on a USB stick, has links to a huge number of distros, will install many of them on the stick for you automatically, and YUMI itself doesn't require an installer. You can just run YUMI whenever you want to add another OS to your USB. With most USB's these days you can have quite a few Linux, FreeDOS and other standalone distros on one stick. YUMI will create a menu that allows you to soft-boot the one you one after the hard-boot.

You can get that here: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator.

I would recommend at the very least that you put

• FreeDOS
• GParted (Partition Tools)
• Memtest86+ (Memory Testing Tool)
• System Rescue CD

on the USB. All of them are dead useful; YUMI has entries for all of these, just pick 'em on the distro menu and YUMI will do the heavy listing of putting them on the stick.

You can cleanup the partition after booting the stick with gpartd. If your USB is 16GB or greater, you can also add your Windows installation CD to the USB stick, and do your Windows installation from it as well. It will be much faster than installing from the CD.

Good Luck.

[tophat9000]

Of course if you boot the machine from the disk your going to wipe that disk will be in use..make a bootable floppy, cd, or usb stick with the program on that

[minnesota_bound]

Use CopyWipe for Windows. Burn a cd with it then restart the pc and boot to the cd. How to do that depends on your model. Example you press F12 as the pc starts up. See the screenshots of what you will see when it does boot
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.php

At work this is what we use to erase everything on a pc prior giving it away. If you want to instal XP on it again and if you do not have a cd then go to Ebay. There are many for sale.
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/windows-xp-home-edition

If you buy a new pc you can also put Windows 7 on it.
Amazon and Best Buy are selling it online.

[asinclair]

If your goal is to make the data on your hard drive guaranteed not recoverable, you can take a hint from what the various National Laboratories do in their Green (top-secret) areas: disassemble the drive and destroy the disk surfaces. The tools for taking apart the drives are readily available and not expensive.

The labs have vats of acid for that purpose. But there are far safer alternatives.

For glass-substrate drives, a hammer and a bit of mania does an excellent job of making the platters unreadable. (Wear safety goggles.)

For metal-substrate drive platters, fine wet-or-dry sandpaper does an excellent job of making data recovery impossible.

And one of the benefits is that you get all those cool fridge magnets.

[3Fingas]

1. download bootable CD kill disk...
http://killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

2. Wipe disk

3. Use sledge hammer

[Revolting cat!]

I’ll help you out, free of charge, but only if you put Apple OS in its place!

[PieterCasparzen]

If you only have 1 partition on the disk, and it is the XP partition you’re trying to delete, but you booted from the partition, you’re trying to wipe out the operating system (XP) that is currently running. When the partition is gone, the whole file system is gone - including currently open files, etc.

You need to boot from some other device.

I had a netbook with Vista on it that I wanted to “wack”. I had a bootable installation DVD of another operating system (CentOS).

I turned the netbook off.

I bought a USB DVD drive, plugged it in.

Turned on the netbook.

When into BIOS Setup (f2 key or f12 key or delete key or something, I forget, but it tells you quickly on the screen after you turn the machine on. You’ve got to be quick.)

Once in BIOS setup (no operating system is running, you’re running code that’s in the chips on the motherboard), I changed the Boot Sequence so it booted first from the USB DVD device. Then I exited the setup, saving my changes.

Upon exiting setup, the machine does a restart.

Lo and behold, it booted from my DVD, and I proceeded to install CentOS onto the netbook’s hard drive, wiping out Vista.

If you want to put XP back, if you had a bootable install disk for XP, or any other OS, for that matter, you can do whatever you want to the hard drive - once you boot NOT from the hard drive, since at that point the OS on the hard drive is not currently running, the OS you boot from off DVD just sees the hard drive as a hard drive which it can do whatever it wants to.

[Ghost of SVR4]

Download a linux live CD (any distro is fine). Open up a terminal and type “sudo su -”; after that, issue “dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda bs=1M” (sounds like an older machine so the disk is probably labled hda) just let it run. Once done, issue the same command and that drive will be pretty well wiped.

[Dalberg-Acton]

I always use DBAN (Darick’s Boot and Nuke) if I want EVERYTHING erased. It’s free and works great. Download and then you burn a bootable (linux) disk.

[CA Conservative]

Download a “live” Ubuntu CD and use dd to write all zeros to the drive.

Assuming your hard drive is identified as sda, you would open a terminal and type:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M