HowTo?: Remove DVDimage from HD

Hi all, I'm new here, so here goes...
A friend of mine was just given a rather nice computer that needs just a little work, and that's where I come in. My knowledge level, better than most and woefully inadequate on a couple of topics (like the one coming up). So here is the situation: On the second hard drive is a nasty (porn) DVDimage (.ISO) that I just can't get rid of. I've tried to delete it several ways, and have even tried to format the HD to get rid of it. HELP! (It just occured to me that maybe I can get rid of it in safe mode...what do you think?) I'm not at the computer right now, but the opsys I know is XP Pro

Karen:confused

 

Have you tried using a live Linux distro to delete it? Linux is able to do things Windows doesn't like to let us do sometimes.

 

Hi Plodr. I've only tried a standard, simple delete, and formatting the drive through the Windows XP (since it is the second harddrive in the system) Both things gave about the same message, the gist of which is that there was another program using it, and so could not be deleted/formatted. I won't be going back over there until tomorrow afternoon, so I can't try any fixes until then. I will try your suggestion tomorrow first thing! and just in case, I'll take any other suggestions you can come up with.

 

Dear heart, thank you for your reply. I am aware what a wonderful OS Linux is, but my resources are limited at this time, and tho I used to get to play around a little with Unix years ago, I have never found myself with a Linux opportunity.

 

Hi

I believe you might not be familiar with the term "live distro". This is where you can burn Linux to a DVD/CD and boot FROM the DVD/CD, without installing the Linux OS onto your computer.

Linux Mint is what I would suggest in your case. It's available here:

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php (click the 32 bit link to download the .ISO)

If you don't have a favored burning program, try ImgBurn (http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download just click one of the bold Mirrors to download it). Once you install it and I believe you'll likely need to reboot, you will be able to right click the Linux ISO file you downloaded, and click Burn with ImgBurn. It's important you don't simply drag the file over to a burning program to burn. Once you've burned the disk, you can restart the machine and tell the computer to boot from DVD/CD. It will load Linux for you. Yeah, it takes a few minutes to find your way around and figure out how to do stuff, but I promise you can figure it out without reading tons of help articles, etc. It's much different than it was in the earlier Unix days! Anyway, just be sure you don't mess with your Windows hard drive, but you should be able to deal with the persistent files on the drive you need to fix.

 

:-DWho Lock Me worked, found the process (1) (was system), killed and then deleted, and now reformatted drive. Happy Dance!