The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    How do i restore my Studio to factory default AND erasing the primary disk?

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by tracerit, Aug 16, 2009.

  1. tracerit

    tracerit Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    266
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    There's a 10GB partition that will return the Studio to factory defaults, but i onlyi know how to do this through Windows. What I want to do is to run a hard drive erase program (it's called DBAN) during boot.
     
  2. Terbo

    Terbo Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    6
    Messages:
    196
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    You can wipe your computer through the Vista install disk, you don't need any other program. Just boot to the Vista disk and when it asks you which partition to install to, delete all the partitions and create a new one.

    It seems complicated but just give it a try, its really VERY easy.
     
  3. tracerit

    tracerit Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    266
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    that doesn't do a secure wipe of all my information though. that's what DBAN does.
     
  4. karan1003

    karan1003 Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    8
    Messages:
    383
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Did you load it into a CD or USB drive and then boot off of that? After doing that and starting the program you can use its interactive mode to clear whatever partitions you want - I'm assuming that since you want to restore it to factory default you won't want to get rid of that last 10GB partition. then install the OS from the CD, and you should be good to go.