Originally Posted by
Saab Dastard
Boot off XP media.
Delete any and all existing partitions.
SD
Good idea - as long as you're not hoping to be able to recover any data from the hard drive (i.e. your files). Delete the partitions and you would lose everything.
Go ahead if there's nothing on there you need to recover.
Otherwise - you could plug the hardrive directly into another PC and might be able to copy your files off before wiping. A PC repair shop / help desk could do this easily but will probably charge an excessive fee.