Hard drives preloaded with UBUNTU require cleaning

Hard drives that are preloaded with UBUNTU will require “cleaning” prior to installing Windows.
Below are the steps to clean the HDD.

Please follow the below given process to clean the HDD and delete any partitions.

Process for Creating a Bootable Pen drive to update BIOS outside windows

What we require:
1. A pen drive (preferably 2GB or lower)
2. DELL 32bit diagnostics creator application (preferably - http://ftp.us.dell.com/diags/CW1354A1.exe, because this version will support capacities higher than 2GB as well)
3. Optional Application –USB Format Tool http://tinyurl.com/usbf0rmat, to be used to format the drive later in case we are using a pen drive of capacity higher than 2GB



Step 1: Open the DELL 32bit diagnostics USB/CD creation tool and choose to install to USB

Step 2: Select the correct USB device (in case a 4GB or higher capacity drive is inserted you will get a warning which can be ignored)

Step 3: Files will be copied to the pen drive

Step 4: Confirmation after the drive is made bootable for 32bit diagnostics

Step 5: In My Computer the USB drive contents will normally show the below files

Step 6: Uncheck “Hide Protected Operating System Files”. Ignore the error when it comes.

Step 7: Autoexec.bat file will now be visible in the list of contents of the USB drive

Step 8: Delete the Autoexec.bat file from the USB (At this point you can copy the BIOS file to the USB drive if you want to do a BIOS update outside OS)

Step 9: Reboot the system and keep pressing F12 to get to the device select menu and choose USB Storage Device

Step 10: Once you get the C:\ prompt – you can run any executable (like the BIOS update file which you might have copied)


Once on command prompt window, use below mentioned commands:

• Type DISKPART  and press enter
• Type list disk and press enter, output will show the number of drives connected to the system including USB media, note down the number of HDD to be formatted.
• Type select disk X, where X is the number of the disk to be formatted, Disk X is ---selected message will appear on screen.
• Type clean and press enter, this will clean HDD

Alternate method to create debug media:

1. Re name the FIXHDD.EX_  file to FIXHDD .EXE
2. Double click on the file to launch the CD burning software.
3. Insert a Blank CD into the DVD Drive and click on start button.
4. Once process completed debug media is ready.
5. Boot from this media and type command fixhdd.exe  on command prompt.

See also:

Seagate External USB 3.0 HDD fails

Reinstall OS on system having msata SSD