Hi "how do you wipe you hard drive clean???" I have been trying to do the same thing and am having all kinds of problems. The support guy who isn't helping very much shouldn't be asking you annoying questions like why do you want it done, he should simply answer your question.
I tried D'ban also and had the same problem with boot disk. Ater setting up computer to book to CD drive I would receive error message which read somethign like "unable to boot from drive," or "unreadable bootable media, etc."
I also downloaded bcwipe, and actually paid for iolo's "drive scrubber" with no success. My piece of **bleep** envy with win 8 is finally being replaced by HP with a new laptop which has arrived and I want to wipe the old laptops drive before returning it. And, I want to do what you did with the new laptop, which is wipe drive and load win 7 without, as you so accurately put it, all that HP crap that comes pre-loaded so you operating system is already at war with the hardware manuacturer. And God forbid you download an apple product like "i-tunes." Then it becomes armageddon.
Anyway. Would you please write down how you were able to wipe you drive clean, and then how you were able to load win 7 on it? I would really appreciate the help.