Wiping my Hard Drive

[Stammer]

So my major computer died, I brought it in to FutureShop and they checked it over. They told me that the problem with it could be fixed simply by rebooting the computer to its original state.

I got my Windows 7 disk and everything I need. My only problem is that the "problem" with my computer doesn't allow me to access ANY items on my computer. And every tutorial and web site I can find (including the Windows 7 instruction manual) all tell me that I need to click on certain items in order to format it.

Any item I click on, ranging anywhere from games to Firefox to Administrative Tools gives me a message saying "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item," and from there I can only click "OK".

Does anyone have any advice?

 

[Snork Maiden]

In answer to the topic title: You don't want to be wiping the HDD from within Windows, you want to be booting from the Windows 7 install disk and formatting stuff from there.

You'll probably need to go into the computers BIOS and change it so that it looks for a CD when the PC starts rather than booting from hard disk. You could break stuff by messing with the BIOS, but to be honest setting the boot order shouldn't be hard. There's a bunch of tutorials on how to do it for each BIOS here [http://www.hiren.info/pages/bios-boot-cdrom] but I can help if those don't make sense. After changing that if you turn your PC on with the Win7 install disk in the drive it should load up the installation from that, and at some point you'll have the option to format everything prior to reinstalling Windows.

I'm not entirely convinced that wiping everything is the only solution (although it should be a good one), but I have no idea what the actual problem could be. Bear in mind you'll obviously lose *everything* that isn't backed up if you format stuff and reinstall Windows.

Pr. surprised that shop didn't do this for you if you took it in, to be honest.

 

[Stammer]

I actually figured it out myself. I restarted the computer and mashed buttons on my keyboard as it was starting up. It interrupted the startup process and brought me to a screen that asked me if I wanted to boot-up the DVD in the drive, to which I hit "Yes".

The rest was cake.

The Stammputer lives again!

(But I do thank you for replying, Snork.)