Testing memory and wiping hard drive before installing Ubuntu

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2019 at 19:07, Ian Bruntlett <ian.bruntlett at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am refurbishing a Toshiba Satellite C50-A-1JM laptop that was donated to the Computer Wombling Project. This is the approach I usually take:-
>
> 1. Test memory with a memtest86+ CD-R
> 2. Wipe the hard drive with dban CD-R
> 3. Install Ubuntu or Lubuntu from DVD
>
> Sadly, steps 1 and 2 don't work any more. The system currently has Windows and Ubuntu on the drive and I am trying to wipe the entire drive to ensure the donor's privacy.
>
> I can get to a GRUB prompt. Maybe I could type in some kind of GRUB command to boot from a CD-R - what command(s) would I have to use?

That's weird. Should do. I googled it and it looks fairly vanilla.

PLOP can help coax machines reluctant to boot from optical disks into doing it.

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

Might well work with a USB floppy drive.

A BIOS update might fix it, too.

Is it new enough to have UEFI? It's possible that your boot media
might not understand that...

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