Issue Wiping Drive

Hi There,

I am using the free version of CCleaner. My desire is to completely wipe the hard drive on a old laptop, so I can prepare to get rid of it (I just bought a (much) new(er) (and much better) laptop and no longer need this old one any longer. I've already backed up everything on this old (Toshiba) that I want or need).

And so, at the recommendation of someone at the Toshiba Community forum I decided to download the free version of CCleaner. And now having done so, I have yet to get it to function properly on my machine. The issue is this: I can navigate to TOOLS, and then even select the DRIVE WIPER option. However, when I choose Wipe Entire Drive, the hard drive option (C - Drive) is greyed out (and no matter how many times I click on it, it does absolutely nothing --- I am unable to select it in this context). This is rather odd, because the Free Up Space options are not greyed out.

So does anyone here happen to know what this might mean? Will I have to purchase the full version in order to make this program do what I want it to do? But this would contradict what the support tech at Toshiba (forums) told me, because he/she specifically impressed upon me the point that I needed to select the FREE version of this program. As a matter of fact I have since responded back to that individual regarding this issue, and again he/she emphatically reinforced the notion that the FREE version will do exactly what I want it to do (which is completely wipe the drive clean).

Heres a little information about what I am dealing with here:

Toshiba Satellite (laptop) running Windows Vista Home Premium Version (it has been upgraded from Home Basic to Home Premium).

It has a 64-Bit Athlon X2, with 2GB RAM (although I don't know why it says it is 64-Bit, because I am pretty sure the processor is only 32-Bit ... But at any rate ... )

Anything else you need to know ... Let me know.

Thanks!

Louis

Logic would hold here. You can't full wipe a system that is currently live because Windows won't let you. After all in what sense could ccleaner keep running if no operating system is hosting it?

If you truly want to nuke the drive, wait til you have the new PC; remove the hard drive from the old computer; attach it to the new PC (mamy products exist for this purpose); and then wipe the old drive. Your other option is to make a bootable CD of DBAN http://www.dban.org/ and nuke the drive

Cool, thanks. You are right, that does make a lot of sense. I hadn't thought about that, but you're absolutely correct.

Thanks again!