formatting a hard drive to wipe out windows XP Pro

hi all i know this is a stupid question but here goes a friend asked me to try to help him format his hard drive to rid himself of viruses
MY question is how do i go about wipping everything on the hard drive so i can do a clean install & is it possible to use a 89se format command to do this task........I know this sounds stupid but i am stuck you guys have allways been great in the past helping me saying that please reply and the laugh is on me as i wouldn't blame you

Thanks

Phil

 

If you have a setup disk then you can go into the recovery console (Use the Windows Setup CD-ROM to start your computer. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press 'R" to repair.)

And then use the format command. to format the disk. Then you can restart the system and start the fresh installation.

 

Just use your windows XP CD

Look here too:
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=25831

 

thanks so much for all your help guys im going for it now only hope i can get the right chip set installed i have no info on his computer other that its an hp with dell setup disks


thanks so much again
Phil

 

ps. to my fault i forgot to ask if anyone knows what chipset the HP Pavilion ZE4800 needs

thanks again
Phil