Can't wipe drive clean on Win 98 PC

I have an old machine with Windows 98 that I want to donate. I want to wipe the hard drive clean before I give it away. It's not connected to the Internet so I've tried to download several disk clean programs on my current machine to install them on the old one to clean the disk (dban, killdisk, Erase). However, none of them can be installed and set up. Some have messages relating to the .dll and others that prohibit their being installed. I've also tried to download and install a couple of CD writing programs to backup some info from the old machine; nothing works. I don't think there is any critical personal info on the disk, and I'm wondering if I should just go ahead and donate it. It's driving me crazy trying to wipe the disk.

 

:wave Welcome to Major Geeks :major
DBAN is a bootable utility. You boot to it and you do not install it on the machine you plan on wiping. The download creates a a boot disk (using the current non-Win98 PC) that you put into the Win98 PC and boot to the DBAN disk. You can also use SuperFDisk. It will also create a bootable floppy disk (or CD image file to burn for a bootable CD) and it can be used to easily delete partitions and format drives. http://www.majorgeeks.com/Super_Fdisk_d4985.html You can also simply remove the drive from the tower before donating it. Now, on to CD burning:
Here's some CD burning tools that work with Win98:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/EasyISO_d2499.html (does not require installation; unpack the zipped download with WinZip/WinRAR/7zip/etc; put a blank in the CDRW drive; launch the .EXE file in the unzipped folder; drag-n-drop the stuff you want to burn; click on "burn" when you're ready to burn; couldn't be easier!)
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Express_Burn_d4573.html (also really easy to use)
All of the programs I've linked to are 100% free to download and use :-D

Good luck! I hope this helps!

[dlb]
:major

 

Do you require secure wiping of your disk? If not, why not use the utilities already on Win 98?

1. Create a Win 98 boot disk. Click Start / Settings / Control Panel / double-click the Add Remove programs icon / click the Startup Disk and create disk.

2. Ensure FDISK and FORMAT are also on the boot disk.

3. Insert the Windows 98 boot disk in your first bootable device, and then restart your computer.

3. Now use FDISK and FORMAT C:/S to wipe your disk.