clearing a hard drive ?

[bigblue736]

Hi Folks

I have an older Dell PC with a 40 gig hard drive.I would like to donate this PC to a local School but I need to erase the hard drive of all settings etc.Is their a way to erase it ?
Also If I can do this do I have to re install Windows XP ?
Any tips would be appreciated.
Thanks
Bigblue

 

[superdave1984]

killdisk.
And you will have to reinstall windows. Killdisk will overwrite every block on the drive including the recovery partition so if you have the recovery disk that came with the computer and you erase that partition, the disk won't work. I think you can select which partition you kill however so read the instructions.