Juan Wei wrote:
Paul has written on 8/1/2013 4:25 PM:
The MBR isn't a problem, as you can pull the hard drive,
slave it to another computer (as a non-boot drive), and
just erase it. That's if your plan was to start from
scratch. Then, put it back into the machine.

Can't it be erased in situ by running a wiper program from a bootable CD?

Normally, the answer is yes.

What you should be doing though, is entering the model number
of the computer into Google, to find out if there are any
issues with how it implements the basic features.

There was one brand in Europe, where virtually every generation
of computers they sold, it involved a different low level "trick",
such as using an HPA to hide the recovery partition. And it
helps to know all the details, before attempting to restore the
computer to like-new conditions.

Paul