Computer hard drive format

[Graham C]

I have an old lappy that has a few viruses on it and I can't seem to get rid of them.  If I format the hard drive, will it get rid of them?  It's no problem wiping it.  I'd then like to install Linux as I've lost the Windows disk I had for it.   I've seen that you can boot it from a memory stick on the Ubuntu page.

Does that sound like a good plan?  How to I format the hard drive?

[millidonk]

I have done exactly this and it was fine. Wiped the lot, installed Ubuntu from USB, easy game.

I formatted mine by buying a shell for the laptop hardrive, plugging it into another PC and wiping it that way or you could buy a new SATA drive for peanuts.

I ended up getting a windows install disk as Ubuntu is horrid.

[SubZERO]

you should be able to get rid of them without doing this, but yeah it will solve your problems if you dont care about the data on there