When Booting from FDD: Remove Disks or Other Media

JMHar · Sep 22, 2006

I'm trying to erase the HDD's of several laptops so that they can be donated to various programs. Doing so requires that I:

Change the boot order in the BIOS
pop in floppy and restart computer.
perform the wipe to DOD standards
verify that the drive was completly wiped

Well on several of the machines, when I restart, I get:

Remove disks or other media.
Press any key to restart

which I do only to have the computer try to run Windows like it would normally. I then start over by restarting, entering the BIOS to verify that the first boot device is the FDD (which it is) as well as verifying that the HDD is being recognized (in these instances it has been, but I'll get to my other problem later). I exit BIOS, let it boot and get (you guessed it!)

Remove disks or other media.
Press any key to restart

each time this happens I am booting a PC DOS floppy to run Norton GDisk to wipe the drives. If I use another utility (Autoclave v0.3) it boots directly from the floppy and I can wipe the drive. The only problem with using Autoclave is that I can't verify the drive has been completly wiped (using Norton Diskedit) because when I restart the computer it doesn't detect a HDD, and my job requires that EACH drive be checked and if necessary, re-wiped or degaussed/destroyed.

If anyone can give me some insight as to exactly what is happening, and what I can do/try to get past these problems, I would be appreciative. If more info is needed from me just ask and I'll do my best to provide it.

Rick · Sep 22, 2006

This might seem like a basic idea, but have you tried another Norton disk? Can you create another? Do you have access to another?

Diskettes go bad all the time and you may even still be able to read the diskette, but sector 0 of floppy disks seems to be the first one to go usually, which resuls in no booting.

If you don't have access to another diskette or can't get yours working for whatever reason, there's plenty of other freeware security wipe programs out there.

You may also be able to rebuild the diskette by formatting another one, making it bootable with a DOS system (www.bootdisk.org - PCDOS) and copying your Norton file(s) from the old one to the new one.

Nodsu · Sep 23, 2006

You could also create a bootable CD instead of using a floppy. All you need is the bootable floppy and a CD burning program that knows how to make bootable CDs.

JMHar · Sep 25, 2006

Rick said:
This might seem like a basic idea, but have you tried another Norton disk? Can you create another? Do you have access to another?

Diskettes go bad all the time and you may even still be able to read the diskette, but sector 0 of floppy disks seems to be the first one to go usually, which resuls in no booting.

If you don't have access to another diskette or can't get yours working for whatever reason, there's plenty of other freeware security wipe programs out there.

You may also be able to rebuild the diskette by formatting another one, making it bootable with a DOS system (www.bootdisk.org - PCDOS) and copying your Norton file(s) from the old one to the new one.

I doubt it's the diskettes because I've tried multiple diskettes and they all give do the same thing in a few machines but work fine in others. I'll try making a bootable cd and then seeing what happens.

Nodsu said:
You could also create a bootable CD instead of using a floppy. All you need is the bootable floppy and a CD burning program that knows how to make bootable CDs.

I'll also try making a bootable cd. At this point I have nothing to lose.

JMHar · Sep 26, 2006

I was able to boot from a boot disk and then run the apps. Thanks!!!

When Booting from FDD: Remove Disks or Other Media

JMHar

Posts: 13 +0

Rick

Posts: 4,512 +66

Nodsu

Posts: 5,451 +7

JMHar

Posts: 13 +0

JMHar

Posts: 13 +0

Similar threads

Latest posts