Dead Motherboard, trying to wipe drive...

Hi, I have my laptop hard drive hooked up to an external hard drive, well, I turned it into the external hard drive and I am trying to wipe the hard drive clean and then re-install windows vista. I sold on ebay and don't want all my stuff available. I am pressed for time because I was told it was done and I just hooked it up to check only to find out that it's ALL still there!!!:rolleyes

It's a Vista Home Premium SPK 1 bit. I downloaded WipeDrive but it keeps wanting me to reboot to start and I'm not sure do I start it up in safe mode and then just choose this drive?

How hard is it gonna be to re-install windows. Or should I just include the disk for the buyer to do it???? I'm new at this so please help!!! And not too techie for me okay.... please.....

 

So, here's what I got from your post:
You have a drive that was an external drive. You installed it in a PC. It is now an internal drive, or Drive C:. You're selling the drive (or PC) on eBay. You want the drive wiped clean. Right?
It depends on how clean you want it, and how much time you have. If you overnight, then use Darik's Boot-n-Nuke. It's free; download link: http://www.majorgeeks.com/Dariks_Boot_and_Nuke_d4596.html It does what it says: you create a boot disc (CD or floppy) and boot to it, and it wipes the drive beyond all forms of recovery. If you just need a quick format, there's a bazillion free tools for this in the Drive Utilities section. A couple of suggestions:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Partition_Logic_d4780.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/BootIt_Next_Generation_d646.html (says 'shareware' but the free version is fully functional)
http://www.majorgeeks.com/CPM_Cute_Partition_Manager_d5369.html
. . . I found these 3 programs in 1 minute of poking around... I'm sure you can find more. :-D

 

I have it installed in the external drive hooked up by attaching it to the usb and running cord into my other computer so it shows on my computer as a drive. But I can't just go in and do anything. Ultimately I would like to erase all personal stuff easily and if that means wipping it then so be it... I would like him to have the operating system when he gets it though.

 

Yeah, went and read more, no you have it completely opposite. I am selling the computer, it is dead but not the hard drive. If it was just a matter of wiping an external drive then that would be pretty simple I agree.