I've been considering Darik's boot & nuke to get rid of s**tty windows installations and get a fresh install. So is anything like bios/ Ethernet etc.'s config stored on hard drives? Also how can I get as near to perfect W7 installation as possible? I've noticed Windows has a general habit of developing exceedingly stupid errors like getting hanged if I use specific page view option, menus not auto closing etc. Any guidance to revert them (many more, hehe)? Daz is not answering : Does the loader insert script on every boot up?
You can nuke it, but why do so? If there is no sensible data...just format it and you're done. Then install Windows 7. What configuration is saved where depends on what configuration we're talking about and can't be answered in a general way. I've never had any of those errors you're talking about, especially not with Windows 7. But dependence again, this should be seen from error to error...
This little bit confusing, the first post you said want to remove windows, but in the 2nd one you said the BIOS. Its really different, BIOS setting etc is located on Motherboard, but Windows, bootloader etc located on Harddrive
The only time I've "nuked" a hard drive to reinstall windows is if it has Vista on it. Vista seems to do some weird crap that a format wont fix. I usually 0 out the drive for a couple minutes then stop it. If I REALLY want to be sure, then I'll do the whole drive. But whatever it does, is probably in the MBR area. It seems odd, maybe it's just a coincidence that when I did it, I was then able to get a proper XP install to go and when I did not do it, I'd run into issues. If giving a drive to someone, then I usually like to use randomization, followed by a write of zeros. The shred tool in Linux works great for this. I usually do like 27 passes depending on how sensitive the data on there was or could have been. I like to think of data on a hard drive not so much as 0's and 1's only but anything in between. If you write 0 over a 1, you get 0.23 or something. If you write 0 on it again, you get 0.06 and so on. Think of it as magnetism forces. If you had 1 0 1 written on a drive it might be something like 0.93 0.3 0.95. If you zero it out once, it will be 0.3 0.02 0.31. Someone who really knows what they're doing can figure out that it used to be 1 0 1 written there. If you do multiple writes with randomization then it should scramble this. This is all theory though, and whether or not it's true, the equipment to do this, and the process, would be very expensive and complex. Need to take into account how the heads allign on the platters, the order in which the platters are written to, the encoding if any, etc.... so would be very hard to recover at this level. But if a credit card number or other info existed on there and someone knows about it, they'll do what it takes to get to it.
BIOS settings are not on the HD which you want to format or nuke. You can do anything to the HDD. You can format it, add/delete [partitions, and then format. Some drivers are part of windows 7 install, but all other drivers (incl. Intel chipset, NVIDIA, etc) can be downloaded and installed after installing win 7. I have formated my HDD many times (own built PC). BIOS is something that remains safe unless you go into it specifically at boot and change settings. So go ahead, format and reinstall. If you are worried about some drivers, make a system image before installing those. I always do install drivers last after making an image. This keeps me safe from driver problems and also as NVIDIA gets usually updated monthly and I would rather go back to my image and reinstall the drivers again. There are many free and paid softwares that scan your PC for driver updates. I download them onto a HDD and reinstall. Hardly a matter of 10-15 mins/month.
if you nuke you hd , you use D.O.D hard drive wipe to clean it to a new hard drive , and it keep the bad sectors from poping up.,and having a bad install of windows or just change to linux or unix like free bsd..... it your choice to do what you like ! i was in the computer feild for 18 yrs in I.T............. and can repair laptops like it was a toy model to put together peace every one !!!