I received an old hard drive and want to add it to my system but want to make it like new.
Is there any way to initialize it by writing over the entire drive to ensure that no old data is still there. Delete just removes files from the directory and I want the drive clean since I don't know where it's been.
Cheers!

If you want to clean it up all you need to do is format it using the command format C: or D: whatever the drive letter is. If it's the main drive do format C: /s

HOLA

¿Hola, como estas?

Now there is a font not seen everyday. Cool trick DoOMsdAY.

:P

Use character map to do it.

Sore wa nan desu ka?

My cat's breath smells like cat food.
- Ralph (The Simpsons)

Nihongo ga dekimasu ka?

DoOMsdAY, do you have time for a NT question?

Ronin, Chinese or Japanese? Japanese, isn't it?? Yeah, of course. No promises on if I'll have an answer, but fire away. :)

Thanks for your time DoOMsdAY. Yea, it was Japanese, but I am not. My question is a problem with a program I loaded. I installed NT4 with sp6 over dos 6.22 (had to find somewhere to write dos). After installing a program, I had a few system32 files overwritten with 0 byte replacements. Not a big deal, but it caused the blue screen on reboot. If I copied valid files back over these corrupt ones, will I have to register them manually? if so, how do I go about it?

Did you make a repair disk? If so, boot with that in the A:\ drive and the Windows NT CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive. It'll allow you to choose an option to repair the NT installation. If not, boot into setup on the Windows NT CD-ROM as usual, and select to repair the installation. I am unsure as to whether this floppy is required or not, but I would assume it is. Depending on when you made it (assuming you did make it) you might have to reinstall SP6. I've not had to repair many NT installations so my knowledge on this area is very limited. (Now, 9x installations, I could write volumes of information on how to fix them since they break so much! :) What did you install anyway? Oh, if you're pondering copying the files over manually (hence you registration question,) then the answer is probably no. The CLSIDs of the ActiveX components/OLE components/whatever term you want to use are standard between builds, and registration just adds those CLSIDs to the Registry so that apps can create instances of them by CLSID (Class ID, btw). So it should be safe. However I am unsure if the actual interface is stored in the Registry, which would cause problems possibly between versions of the controls. I am very new to OLE and COM, so I don't know all of the answers yet. If you can boot into Winnt after manually copying files, just re-register them to be safe. (Run c:\winnt\system32\regsvr32.exe *filename* on each of the files.) Hope that helps.

One note on registering files, only OLE objects will let you register them, so don't worry if some of the files say they can't be registered. (The error will be that "the DllRegisterServer entry point could not be found" if it's not an OLE object.) Also, call me Doomsday or something easy to type, please. My handle is easy for me cause I've typed it for years, but make your life easier. :)

One LAST thing, how long did it take you to learn Japanese? I went to Tokyo recently, loved the Japanese and their language, and was hoping to get some free time to start the process of learning the language. So I was just wondering how long it took you (not that I'd be as fast a learner as you necessarily, but still.) Aragato gozimas (sp).

DoOMsdAY, sorry for the delay as I got bogged down. Actually I just copy and paste your name when I add it, so it really isn't any trouble.

Well I don't really know that much Japanese, but it is a interesting language. I used to know a translation site, but I can't remember it for the life of me.

No, I didn't make a repair disk. I never do as it is too pesky for my liking. I also don't have a cdrom drive on this machine. I copied all the files in the i386 dir to the hdd and ran winnt? from it. It created the three disks and I went from there. I installed sp6 from the LAN that I setup. The NT machine also acts as a web server for the LAN. :)

I am not up to speed on the windows lingo; in fact, I know just about enough to get user tasks accomplished. The files I was speaking of were wnaspi32.dll which I downloaded from MS and copied over. The other file was hhctrl.ocx used by the program. After installing some included updater for that file, I got the blue screen of death. After hitting the spacebar and using the last good configuration the machine booted ok, but the program balked at running it's help.chm file because of the hhctrl.ocx file. I do appreciate all the info you passed on. At least I am not completely in the dark now.

Good luck with Nihongo!!

hhctrl.ocx is the file that provides you with access to HTML Help files (*.chm's). HTML Help is a third-party help authoring program that a lot of companies use - including my own. So not having that intact is not a major deal. Do you know if wnaspi32.dll is a Winsock dependency? The naming makes me think it is - the filename looks familiar but I can't think for the life of me what it is. Hmmm...if you don't have a lot on the machine installed, you might try inserting disk one from your set of three and attempting a repair when in Setup. That'll tell you if you need to have that repair disk or not. (Note for future - this is much easier with a repair disk. :)

wnaspi32.dll (I think it's needed for the aspi interface) and hhctrl.ocx were installed by the program "winoncd" the cd copying program. Or at least the files were over written by that program. I am not sure if the auto updater was corrupt, or if something else occured. On the blue screen there were several files listed, but I didn't write them down. I took care of it by smashing the case repeatidly until the computer reset all by itself. As previously mentioned, I have no tollerence for defiant inanimate objects. :)

I think the compiled htm files are a waste of resources. I don't understand how the time and effort of writing one is easier than the old style. In my opinion, it is just another way MS wanted to add their bloatware into programs..... like those little animated paper clips that suck up 500mb of disk space.

Thanks for the ideas though. As always you've been a great help.

Oh great, you took my next suggestion - which was to smash the case repeatedly. Hmph...thanks a lot. HTML Help is a very handy resource (nice indices, click links to view related pages, etc.) but it has to be used properly. MS does a horrible job of using it well in everything I've seen except for MSDN - which is essentially 1+ GB worth of *.chms. The paperclip is annoying as hell, much like the rest of Office. We have Office 2000 here - and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse... So needless to say I write documents in Notepad or Wordpad and never installed Office (except for Excel - but Excel 97, I have no plans on ever installing 2000.) I think MS is trying to find a limit to the largest executable size you can load into RAM at once sometimes. Word 2000 is somewhere around 20 MB - and 15 MB of it is probably that accursed paperclip.

I have Office 2k and VS 6 installed on the computer I use for school. I couldn't install MSDN as I don't have enough disk space. I use the help files from VC 1 most of the time. It's too bad that MS made most of those functions obsolete. :(

You know I wouldn't put it past MS to cause crashes if windows detects a 3rd party app running at the same time a MS app is running. It is no wonder windows doesn't run correctly unless the user has 768mb of memory. Hmmm I have a copy of Turbo Linux, maybe it's time to give it a try.

Yikes, you sound offended at my HTML crack. I guess I'll supress my opinion on that. How does one compile a chm anyway?

I have a piece or two of Office 97 and VS6 Enterprise (with MSDN) on mine. I couldn't imagine writing code without MSDN anymore. It is so very helpful in every way. Actually, I heard AOL was doing something like that. They were using DLL injection or some neat trick to make it so you could only run AOL IM - no other IM programs. Of course they got in trouble for it and had to stop. Yeah, try Linux - it's fun. I've got Red Hat 6.2 on one of my machines at home. Am hoping to make it into a firewall or something. I don't get offended very easily, Ronin, and wasn't offended at anything you said. I was just speaking from experience - you are more than entitled to your own opinion.

It's tough having the tools, but not the experience in programming. I've got several classes to go yet. At least I can display "hello world." lol...I am looking forward to operating system. I'd like to give VB a try, but haven't gotten the time to do so. I use VC for school. I am a little better off in dealing with hardware than with software. I might have to try Linux when I find the time. I have too many things going on now like setting up the httpd server, school, fooling around in this board :), translating Jap roms to English (about given up on that), and so forth. I just don't have time for the stuff I want to do. Phooey

I got Borland C++ 5.0 somewhere around five years ago when all I knew was Batch, and I was so upset. Here was this highly powerful tool with all of these capabilities, and I could barely install the thing - much less write any code in it. I'd sit there staring at the IDE imagining all of the neat things I wanted to do. So I know exactly what you mean. :) I wonder how many years that "hello, world" thing will last. So far thirty or so. I'm just seeing a future many years from now when a young, aspiring programmer comes to me and asks where this thing "hello, world" came from since no one he knew could tell him - they'd all since forgotten. VB is easy, quick, and very annoying if you want to do anything low-level. VC is slow, incredibly powerful and flexible, and very annoying if you just want to write a quick app that says..."hello, world" for example. :) If you like hardware, maybe you should go for hardware engineering in school instead of software. I took a couple of hardware engineering classes and it's pretty fun - I'm relatively good at it - I just prefer software. How much longer do you have in school? That's a major time-drainer. What ROMs are you translating? And for what systems? I just went out and tracked down every RPG I could for ZSNES and started playing Chrono Trigger and Secret Of Mana again. Memories...< sigh >

I am studying Computer Engineering because I like both aspects - the hardware and software. It seems like I have eons to go, and it doesn't help that I am somewhat older than most folks. I can't remember the lectures for anything. :) I am just starting my 3rd semester, so it's going to be a few years yet. ah "hello world"... Well that might be my greatest program... I did manage to have the individual characters come in from all sides by using for loops. Then it spelled out "hello world" in the middle of the screen. That was interesting I suppose. lol

I was using Naga, Hex Workshop, and something else which the name escapes me at the moment. I was editing SNES roms and it took forever because the font addresses were in different spots for every rom. I had to edit a few fonts, search for that string, find the address, and then workout the character table from there. It is a real pain.... I can't believe some people made it through an entire rom. I also prefer the RPGs. What roms do you have for ZNES?