Ok computer boffins, heres one for you. Just resurrected my old 1.7ghz 256m ram 80gb hard drive computer to sell to a mate, brand new hard disc, i loaded on xp and downloaded sp2 so all up to date no probs. Took it over there saturday and set it all up for them, ie got adobe reader, realplayer etc etc plus transferred all my docs from their old computer no probs

Get a call sunday morning, computer has locked up, they try all backup discs, reload windows, but now it crashes either while loading windows or shortly after getting into windows, cant even access safe mode, my thoughts is it has got a virus that has screwed it completely as i was downloading stuff off the net before i downloaded the anti virus software (zonelabs internet suite btw)

Is there anything i can do to get this damn thing working again, there are no files needing to be saved so a full wipe is probably the best option unless anyone can point out any other solution.
How do i format the hard disc as last time i did it was with windows 3.1
Cheers in advance

you can reformat your drive with windows or a boot disk, but id check your hardware first. Download the memtest86 iso and burn that to cd, and that will test your processor and ram. This is more likly as virus's these days are not that destructive (no point killing the host that going to propagate you). Also check ram is properly seated (remove and reinsert)

Hmm everything seated properly inside case so that seems fine, how do i boot from a disc?

set your bios to boot from cd