Suggestions to erase hard drive.

[munkytown]

My brother wants to sell his laptop and wants to be as sure as possible he can get the hard drive wiped clean before he sells it. Other than downloading a program to do this, is there a way to completely erase the hard drive? He said he got some kind of error when he tried to format the disk and it wouldn't let him, so not sure if that was the only other option to do this or not. The laptop is running Windows XP. Thanks.

[patio]

Darik's Boot and Nuke...

[hot dog]

I'm with patio on that.............but if you don't want to download, which I don't see why you wouldn't want to, has he tried simply reinstalling the OS?

[WillyW]

My brother wants to sell his laptop and wants to be as sure as possible he can get the hard drive wiped clean before he sells it. Other than downloading a program to do this,

To be "as sure as possible",   then like the others have said,  DBAN.
In other words -  downloading a program.   
Check it out here:   http://www.dban.org/

is there a way to completely erase the hard drive? He said he got some kind of error when he tried to format the disk and it wouldn't let him, ...

Sounds like he already booted Windows from that hard drive,  then tried to format that drive.
Windows won't eat itself.
Have you got a Windows install CD?    You can probably boot to that CD, and then run the format command from it,  and then it will format the hard drive.
But -   that won't be as good as DBAN,   for being "as sure as possible" that the data on the drive is not recoverable.

Check out DBAN.   Read the info there on the site.      It is probably your best bet.

[munkytown]

Thanks guys. I can't remember why he didn't want to actually download a program to use but I'll tell him about this one and just download it for him on my computer and put it on a disc if he wants me to.

[hot dog]

Just be sure to burn the DBAN to disk with an ISO burning software.....Active ISO burner is quick an easy..
here:

http://download.cnet.com/Active-ISO-Burner/3000-2646_4-10602452.html?tag=mncol

Install Active ISO burner.....then once you've unzipped the DBAN file, right click on the .iso file and click "Burn ISO File"   and watch it go...

Next, pop the burned cd into the laptop, making sure that the boot order is set to boot from the cd...   When you see the main DBAN menu type autonuke    It may take a while, to be patient

[BC_Programmer]

IMGBurn is my favourite...