sorted for now. cheers

The floppy or cd file depending what one you want to use.

i don't want to smash my hard drive up. there is no sensitive info on it. Basically i partitioned my hard drive and was running dual boot. my master hard drive is now infected with virus so i'm on my secondary drive.

all i want to do is delete everything (including viruses) and start again.

john which bits do i download from that link?

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

the data is still reecoverable from that though the only way to really remove it would take hours and hours.

Unless you smash the fuck out of it im afraid.

I have software that can recover even after a full format.

smash it up i say or use a file shredder software to delete all sensitive files before hand

its got a partition already. so all i'm doing is deleting the partition first to make is one. which option do i use in administartive tools? ( i don't have disk management in there)

is it your main hard drive? if so then boot the computer up with an xp cd and you will get to the partition stage were you can delete them etc. Just delete the partition. When ever you come to use the hard drive again then create a partion with windows setup and it will format etc.

If its a 2nd hard drive then use disk managment in windows: Administartive tools in control panel. Select the hard drive, right click and delete partition! then create one and then format.

Sorry i didnt explain it in very much detail but its early in the morning and i'm ready for bed :lol:

[Edited on 09-07-2007 by pdwhelan]

... format a hard drive? i know i won't get rid of all the data completly from the hard drive but i'd like as much removed as possible