Unable to format harddrive

[itzkinz]

Good morning everyone,

Recently I aquired some sort of virus/malware on my harddrive that is giving me a tremendous headache. I've decided to format the hard drive on my hp pavilion notebook, but am unable to. I believe they have a hidden partition that does not allow me to do so. Also, I have tried booting up with my windows xp cd in the drive, however, during setup it says that there are no hard drives detected. Any suggestions? Many thanks and have a great day all!

[glc]

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&docname=bph07145

Do a destructive recovery.

[Rev_pizzaguy]

If you just want to completely FORMAT including recovery partitions and everything, GParted works well:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

You can use the LiveCD option and boot to it. Also, do you have the XP disc that came with the HP or is a just a standard XP install disc?

[itzkinz]

Many thanks, I'll try that out and post the results.

[glc]

If you do not have a set of HP recovery media - you must make the set before blowing the recovery partition away.

[itzkinz]

If you do not have a set of HP recovery media - you must make the set before blowing the recovery partition away.

I have a standard xp install disc, will that suffice?

[not important]

The XP disc will work but you will need install the HP drivers for your particular model.

[glc]

I would STILL recommend that you create the media. You only get ONE chance.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/fastFaqLiteDocument?lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=18703&docname=c00608578