Omnitech

anyone know how to clear the hard drive of an omni tech comp, i know how to do it on a compaq but it is different for omni tech

What methods have you tried? It would help to know that.

Are you looking to just reformat or what?

yeah, i am just trying to reformat, i have tried going into bios but i have no idea which to select

lol. You dont need to go into the bios to reformat. Well actually...maybe you do. First off, make sure that you have everything you want backed up to be backed up making sure it's a seperate HD or backing up is usless unless you partition the HD and put you backup on that partition. Then set your bios to boot from a cd before the hard drive. It should be under something similar to "boot oerder" or something. Save and restart. At that point before the OS load screen you should be able to push F8 (on most systems this brings up a boot menu) If it's different post back and I'll see if I can help. If you have the option, load into command prompt only (not windows with command prompt). Then type "format (drive):\" where (drive) is the drive you want to format. It'll prompt you asking if you want to format. Answer yes and it'll start. Once its done, restart but with you OS cd in. Select the frshly formatted HD (or partition) and install. Hope that helped.

what do you mean HD?
and isnt there some sort of "destructive system recovery" which just clears everything on your comp but what came on it?
i just did what you said, but it took me to windows advanced options menu

HD = hard drive. And to the second question, you're probably thinking of system restore which just resets your system to a past saved date. Not the same thing.

so reformat = clean you Hard drive?

Formatting is the act of completely deleting all data on a hard drive.

so if i format, the computer will turn right back on then right, or will i need some soft ware to do that?

Yes, it will turn on but it won't boot into anything. The reason it does that is because the bios is stored on a chip on the motherboard and not on the hard drive.

there's no recovery like that built into windows.. best bet is to boot from your windows xp cd rom- that's the easiest way.. it'll show you a list of all the partitions on your drive(s).. delete all the partitions on c: and then create/format a new primary using ntfs- re-install windows

who, who..dont deleat ALL partitons on the hard drive, that can get you more trouble than fixing.

see some companies use data stored on seperate partitions, i have seen it hapen at work...in comes a <insert brand name older pc here> and needs nuking...
*nuking.....what we do when we whipe a pc at work, it had untold amounts of virus, porn and pop-up schtick crammed into it, and we wipe it...with extreem prejudice hehe^^

so there c: and d:
c is fine, clean it out, deleat partitotn, l to deleat, enter to conferm, bingo, no problems.
then the boss thinks..gee, why not get rid of D: too, its using up 8 gig of space....
*Oh......Boy.....Clanger Alert*

so i go to put the restore disk in, the one that came with the pc and will make it back to its factory settings....
nope, wont do it....refuses to do anyting.
however, when as a last resort the customer buys a new copy of winXP home and w install as normal from the disk, it works fine, we find out that sometimes the restore disks NEED! data from those little nagging D: and so on partittons....

however, if all you have is C:.....meh, no panic....its safe to clean house ^^

I think you left out just enough punctuation and letters on that post to make it confusing, even to me, and I'm a comp geek. "l to deleat", what the heck is that? You have no excuse to not check you sepelling and grammar on these boards and your english, or at least live there. :P

sorry..its just that i need to slow my brain down to match the speed my fingers and spelling can keep up with *sorry*

um..L to deleat is cause i go on auto pilot when i reformat a hard drive these days....

press enter to install win XP
press f8 to agree with the formalites
press esc to install a new copy of XP rather than patch up or fix an existing copy...(90% of re-installs for us is people who are smart enough to want free stuff thru fileshare, but cheap enough to not spend cash on a single anti-virus program....*whinge...grumble..moan* hehe)

then..press d to choose deleat partition
L to conferm deleat partition
enter
then c to create partiton or simply press enter...

*appologies for bad spelling or punctuation, but my brain ants me to touchtype like a high end typist, but my fingers are always cold and slow, and i get letters mixed up sometimes when i want to get it on paper/screen and they cant keep up..*