Formatting Hard disk- How?

[J_Tweedy]

Ok, my friend has a computer with windows xp pro- that has been overrun by viruses and spyware, and was wanting to do a complete clean reinstall of windows and format.
Problem is, when he boots of the xp cd, and tries to delete the partition with windows on it, it wont let him- it says that there are 'temp files' that are required by windows on the partition. I know that this is probably a virus telling the windows cd not to delete, so how do i do a complete reformat without booting off windows cd?
Any ideas?
Thanks

 

[Asus]

So he boots the the WinXP CD and hits D to delete the partition, then Enter to confirm and L to confirm again (you confirm 2 times before it lets you delete the partition) and it gave an error msg?

Then use a floppy disk with Fdisk on it. Boot to ms-dos mode and run Fdisk on drive A. Although use the Windows XP CD to create a new partition and format, not Fdisk.
Or you can always download disk tools from Western Digital, Maxtor or Seagate etc for use on their drives to partition ,format and do disk checks. Again booting to a floppy.

 

[J_Tweedy]

Yeah, it wont let him delete the partition- i will try that fdisk thing- does this look like the right one?
http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/

 

[J_Tweedy]

bump- someone must know how to format without the xp cd?
Is it viruses stopping partition from being deleted (when trying to use the windows cd)?

 

[G-Dub]

bump- someone must know how to format without the xp cd?
Is it viruses stopping partition from being deleted (when trying to use the windows cd)?

I wouldn't think so.

Search boot discs on Google, get the main link, something like bootdisc.com, download the Windows 98 boot disc, boot in dos, run fdisk, delete partiition.

 

[Ti133700N]

Or maybe there is a trial for partition magic so you can delete everything then insert your WinXP CD and reinstall.

 

[J_Tweedy]

Cheers for help guys- turns out hes just too much of a n00b to press D then L to delete the partition- all sorted now, I think.