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Format & Partition Tool Needed


lurk&jerk

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In the good old days of Windows up to XP, you could delete the windows partition and reformat and be back in business with no adverse affect on your hard drive or the performance of your OS. But I've gone through more than a half dozen partition programs and disk wiping programs in an effort to cleanly upgrade from the evaluation version of Windows 7 to an OEM version, and each time Windows 7 resists being fully erased from the drive. Microsoft seems to be implementing some boot encryption or or hardware bios routine that leaves traces even after the Windows 7 OS file and partition is gone that slows down performance and sometimes preserves remnants of the old installation. Since I can't find much about this issue on the Net it may also be my particular software configuration, particularly the firewall that I use, Agnitum Outpost.

You can see the effects when you install Windows 7 on a clean hard drive compared to one one that had Windows 7 previously installed but erased. In the latter case, you will sometimes see a message "checking registry" during the initial re-install of Windows 7 after the previous version was erased and/or get error messages after you think the OS has been cleanly install.

This is not a boot virus issue. My PCs are clean. This problem is cropping up on at least a dozen computers I manage at home and at work. Like I said, with Windows 7, you seem to get one opportunity to get an install right on a virgin hard drive, and then the OS seems to try to preserve some remnants of itself no matter what you do to reformat or wipe the disk. The only tool I've found that actually gives me a clean hard drive for a re-install is the HDDerase.exe, driving wiping utility. But it doesn't work consistently. I was wondering if any other members had any ideas or recommendations or had experienced this problem at all.

Edited by lurk&jerk
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Did you take the Orange Sunshine about 15 years ago ??? Probably just a flash back.

In any case, you are making some connections that are only imagined. But no worries, I have a sure-fire way to completely remove all remnants of Windows 7 on your HDD.

1) Remove all HDD from machine except for the one you want wiped.

2) Download DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke), burn to DVD, and boot from it.

3) Upon boot you will be prompted to enter a choice. Either read the included help files via F2, F3, F4 keys, or just type autonuke. (I use autonuke)

4) Let it run for as many hours as it needs, autonuke is a DoD 3 pass over-write (filling and wiping the entire HDD 3 times), so it could be awhile. When it is done, the HDD will be as clean as it can be.

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If your somewhat experienced use a Ubuntu CD and boot it up, follow the direction from there. Perfect for killing that pos bootloader found on the "hidden" partition.

Loading it from the CD or direct install is useful if you want to say delete the "System Volume Information" found on the partition(s) and other crap that doesn't get recycled after an upgrade or w/e.

Edited by Chrno
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I have tried all of the suggestions submitted. I am an experienced computer user and the problem I have is not an issue of not using the right tool. Darik's nuke disk as well as commercial apps such as Killdisk work, but they take all day to wipe a 300gb harddrive with 1s&0s and even after that you have to use mbrwork.exe to really eliminate all traces of windows 7.

However, I have found that faster tools that purport to delete the partition and/or master boot record don't do a complete job with Windows 7. Somehow the OS recognizes that a previous install has been made and attempts to recover the record of it, either looking for the registry or creating the directory windows.old that restores whatever files it can find from the previous installation. The only way to nuke Windows 7 is to wipe the drive and that takes all day. HDDerase.exe, when it works, is a lot faster. But it doesn't work consistently. As I said, these problems may be because of my particular hardware and or software combination but I posted mostly to see if anyone else has had a similar problem and found a solution. Apparently that is not the case, so I will consider this thread closed.

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DBAN "quick" option is, well, quicker. And just as secure, Jaclaz will be in here shortly with evidence...

For your purpose you probably only need to run it for a few seconds to wipe the first few MB, then reboot.

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I have tried all of the suggestions submitted. I am an experienced computer user and the problem I have is not an issue of not using the right tool. Darik's nuke disk as well as commercial apps such as Killdisk work, but they take all day to wipe a 300gb harddrive with 1s&0s and even after that you have to use mbrwork.exe to really eliminate all traces of windows 7.
If you're nuking your disk with DBAN (and subsequently every sector has been overwritten) and you still have Win7 trying to boot, that would indicate that you have the MBR with the bootsector for Windows 7 on another hard disk, because once you've used something like DBAN to overwrite all the sectors on a disk they should literally be completely zeroed. The BIOS hands off booting to the hard disk to a specific sector location, so if DBAN actually overwrote the disk it *should not* have any bootloader data for the BIOS to find.
However, I have found that faster tools that purport to delete the partition and/or master boot record don't do a complete job with Windows 7. Somehow the OS recognizes that a previous install has been made and attempts to recover the record of it, either looking for the registry or creating the directory windows.old that restores whatever files it can find from the previous installation. The only way to nuke Windows 7 is to wipe the drive and that takes all day. HDDerase.exe, when it works, is a lot faster. But it doesn't work consistently. As I said, these problems may be because of my particular hardware and or software combination but I posted mostly to see if anyone else has had a similar problem and found a solution. Apparently that is not the case, so I will consider this thread closed.
Again, this almost sounds like you have multiple hard disks in the machine, and the Win7 bootloader isn't on the disk that Win7 installed to as the OS volume.
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Just to weigh in one last time, overwriting the drives with 1s & 0s works, no question about it--it just takes all day on today's gigabyte drives. I am also not suggesting that after wiping a disk with any tool, Windows 7 is trying to boot. Rather, during a clean install process using Windows own format utility or 3rd party tools like Acronis or Partition Commander, Windows 7 recognizes that a previous installation has been attempted and preserves what data it can before proceeding with installation. So after I have installed Windows 7 a second time it either has: (1) a directory named Window.old that usually contains io.sys and/or autoexec.bat, or it flashes a message about looking for a previous Windows registry or says the copy is not genuine, when it absolutely is and confirms as much with I go on line and register..

Cluberti may have identified an issue that I did not consider. I do usually install Windows 7 on dual drive systems, with the OS on one drive and non-OS data on the other. I still don't understand why that would be a factor though. The OS is not on the second drive and neither is the pagefile, bootmgr, io.sys or any other boot file. Weird. Anyway, thanks to everyone for their suggestions. (EDIT) Nope same problem with a single drive that dual boots WIN& & XP. Weird.

Edited by lurk&jerk
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  • 1 month later...

I wonder if theres a way to remove the Format part of a win XP Install disk and add it to an win7 install so as to have the format part of the program woking as it does with XP? Hummmmm... Just wordering???

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Just to add some things I think might be worth mentioning...

Windows 7 creates a separate 100MB system partition to store the WinRE environment for startup repair, bitlocker, and as a EFI system partition (ESP). By default a volume letter is not assigned, so it doesn't appear in Computer, but it does in Disk Management and Windows Setup partitioning wizard.

You can erase a drive including the bootsectors using diskpart which is accessible from Windows Setup using the Shift+F10 shortcut.

DISKPART> help clean

Removes any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk with

focus.

Syntax: CLEAN [ALL]

ALL Specifies that each and every byte\sector on the disk is set to

zero, which completely deletes all data contained on the disk.

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. If the ALL parameter is not used, the first 1MB

and the last 1MB of the disk are zeroed. This erases any disk formatting

that had been previously applied to the disk. The disk's state after

cleaning the disk is 'UNINITIALIZED'.

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