"Greg Forschler" wrote in message
...
I'm trying to wipe the hard drive on an old XP laptop. I have a CD
that boots and after typing wipe it does the job. But the drive on
this machine won't work. So I'm trying to do it from a command line,
but I wasn't exactly sure how. A google search left me with things
like
format /u
format c:
format c: /s
but none of these work, I end up with
Required parameter missing-
or
Invalid parameter - /s

What else can I do at this point?

If you are booting the computer from the hard drive that you are trying to
erase that can't be done. What you are effectively trying to do is cut off
the limb that you are sitting on and in this case Windows will not allow
that.

You either need to get your CD drive working so you can boot from that, boot
from a USB thumb drive that has the DOS operating system on it and the
format program or use a floppy drive with the system files on it to boot the
computer.

The format command would be Format C: ENTER from whatever boot media you
use (other than the Windows Operating system command line of course.)