Completely formatting 2 win2k hd's & and want to boot Ubuntu... help.

Because you believe your system is infected with a virus, you may want to burn the CD on another system, or even order or purchase a copy (maybe borrow it from your friend, since it sounds like he is also using Ubuntu). Otherwise, it is a matter of downloading the ISO image from Ubuntu.com and burning it to a CD using Nero, InfraRecorder, or another CD Burning Application which supports burning CD images.

If you have already burned a CD, reformatting can be accomplished inside the Ubuntu installer (boot from the CD, click the Install icon on the desktop). If you are sure that you don't want or need anything from the Windows drive, using the "Guided: Use entire disk" option should be fine.

Using the "Guided..." etc. will format? My question, I guess is; should I format BOTH of my hd's before booting with the ubuntu disk?

And --->(NOOB)<--- How?

Hi,

No need to format your harddisks before booting Ubuntu. The Ubuntu boot CD will do that for you during the installation.

Here is the install guide for Ubuntu 9.04:

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/step-by-step-ubuntu-904-jaunty-desktop-installation-guide.html

Regards,

Mark

Ok, thank you!!! And just a couple more questions... will the installation guide ask me about BOTH of my HDD's? Or will I manually have to format the one I won't be putting the system files onto? Like, will it ask me if I want to change the filing system for the other drive? That's what I'm confused about mostly. Also, you don't think there will be anyway the virus would "leak" or "jump" onto the new file extensions? And that will be all from me... today! :P

Hi,

I don't think the partitioner will ask about both harddisks. The first harddisk will probably be called "sda" or "hda" and the second harddisk will probably be called "sdb" or "hdb". Try switching from the first harddisk to the second harddisk using the built-in Ubuntu partitioner tool. It should be a matter of point and click to switch.... You can only learn by trying out the installer. ;-)

I recommend following Steven's advice and choosing the "Guided: Use entire disk" formatting option. But you might still have to format the second harddisk manually...

The virus cannot leak onto the new filesystems, because it is a Windows only virus, and cannot infect a Linux system. As long as you do not boot Windows anymore, there is almost no danger.

Hope this answers your questions,

Regards,

Mark

Thanks Mark Rijckenberg, that solved my question.

Thank you all for the information... here's to keeping fingers crossed Ubuntu will even take on my box. Will try in a few hours.

Alright... I got it up and running, and so far I'm liking it quite a bit. Couple concerns, however... the "disk janitor" is missing... don't know if that's due to a bad install or not (I did check the md5sum and it checked out right). And I still need to format the drive containing Windows... I checked the "help" section in Ubuntu and it told me to use the "Gnome partitioning editor" located in the System/Admin... section... BUT, it's also not there. Bad install? Everything else seems to work fine, although I'm pretty sure I'll need some drivers for my wireless network adapter (I'm using my girlfriends computer for internets, currently). Please help me get Windows off my drive.

Hi,

Hopefully, the following link should be of help:

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gparted/+question/59537

Regards,

Mark

So, I think something must have gone wrong... either a bad burn making for a bad install, or my box is just fried. I went to that link... downloaded wolvix, checked the md5sum and it was good, burned the iso image, tried booting from my cdrom and it skips past my cd drive and goes straight to the OS selection screen. I tried reinstalling Ubuntu in the same way, and that produces the same result. Either way... once in Ubuntu, it won't even let me check the contents of a disk. Other than a dvd I threw in just to see if it was reading anything at all. It does read, but I couldn't view the movie due to missing drivers. WTF?! I can't get my internet working (see my other question involving Dynex's DX-BUSB wna) to even get the drivers necessary and Windows is STILL on my other HDD.

I tried the "sudo apt-get install gparted" before all this and I receive this error:

package gparted is not available, but is referred to by another package. Blah, blah...

I'm stuck. I would love to uninstall and reinstall... but I don't know enough about the command line business in grub to do it. Can I boot from the cd drive somehow within Ubuntu? Should I reburn an iso disk? I'm lost.

I downloaded a gparted package with a usb flash drive and that that worked. Installed gparted and formatted the bad drive. My cdrom still seems to refuse to read anything other than media... maybe it's just going out. I'll try another driver package, maybe. One concern with the drive, now that it's been formatted, I must have formatted it with the wrong file system... now it refuses to mount. I'll try and figure that one out on my own through gparted's help files.

If anyone should run into the same problem I did, with cdroms refusing to work, and drives needing to e wiped, I used this: <src="http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/gnome/gparted">
Thanks... now I've got to tackle my internet problem.

Also, this mine may have been an isolated incident but if your having problems with permissions, look into this... https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/69718