I'm looking for a freeware program to wipe my hdd, anyone know of a decent one that they would recomend?

Eraser is well regarded.

I Use and recommend Digtal Dolly. It has a drive wipe utility and much more. It boot from a CD. It also has a Partition manager, Formatting utility (almost 100 types), Cloning software, networking, and more. The other I like and recommend is Active@KillDisk-Drive Wipe Utility. This utility is freware and can be run from either a floppy or CD.
Both are excellent program and totally free.

Killdisk will totally overwrite the disk and is the best way to ensure you have eliminated all viruses before reformatting.

I agree. If you need more than a Quick Wipe (1 pass), Digital Dolly can also do a DoD Wipe (7 passes) and Gutman Wipe (35 passes) also. That is one of the reasons I prefer Digital Dolly.

Thanks for the responses, I had heard of killdisk, but wasn't sure of their reputation, and hadn't heard of eraser at all...but that dosen't mean anything. I also had someone else that I trust suggest Killdisk, so I will recomend this to my friend who needs it.

acklan, I still have the Digital Dolly that you sent to me, I would use this on my friends machine, but she now lives in a different state, and that's why I'm trying to find a freeware that she can download and use. Once again I thank you.

Burn her a copy. How did you like those programs?

Unfortunately she wants to have her machine up and running by Monday, other wise I would. She is on a dial up connection, and had the same problem I had downloading it, 41.19MB would take all day.

Without any instructions it is taking a while to learn all of its features, but I sure liked not having to wipe and re-install my os just to change my partitions. As a cruel twist of fate I wound up having to do it anyway. I had forgoten that the DD will also wipe a hdd, I wonder if it is any faster than the Drive Wipe, that took six hours to wipe my 200GB hdd.

She better get with it. That wipe could run 24 to 36 hours. That would be a Quick Wipe (Single Pass).

Hopefully less than that, her hdd is only 40GB.