Formatting question in Vista

[accguy9009]

I have an old notebook running XP Pro that a friend brought over for me to fix. It has an IDE
2.5 hard drive. The notebook hard drive has a virus( at least one), the browser has been hijacked and it won't allow access to the control panel, registry or allow any software to be installed to begin the cleansing process. So I pulled the hard drive and attached the drive to an IDE to USB adapter and plugged it into my desktop running Vista Home Premium 64. I went to control panel/administrator tools/computer management/disk management. I see the "free space" as an unallocated drive/unlettered drive. If I follow the process to get the drive allocated and lettered I must format this drive, or so it seems.

My question is not how to remove the viri or how to use Hijack this etc. to get the drive functioning but if I format this drive will I just be formatting the free space or will I format the whole drive and thus lose the installed operating system on this drive?

If this was my notebook I would use Wipe Drive and reinstall the OS but I don't even have the MS key to do this. If I could get the lappy on line I could use BelArc advisor to get it but they waited to long to bring it to me and it is HiJacked in a big way. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.




Not sure if this is the right location for this post.Mods please move if I chose the wrong location.

 

[JackMDS]

Your story about the free space is Not clear.

Do you see the OS part of the drive? May be it needs to be Mounted.

In any case be careful you might infect your computer too.

You can put the drive back into the laptop and use a a stan alone Cleaning program like clamshell.

http://majorgeeks.com/ClamWin_Portable__d5067.html

If it does not help format and Re-install the OS on the Laptop.

.

 

[accguy9009]

Thank you for replying. The hard drive from the laptop is a 20 GB drive. It showed like 6 GB free before I pulled it. It shows a 6 GB unallocated drive in disk management, thats all I see. How do I mount the drive without formatting?

I was unable to use any other program I tried to cleanse the drive. I got an error message saying the system had spyware from some 3rd party company trying to sell their garbage. The browsers are all HiJacked. These companies are all the same. Its like if I was in the auto glass replacement business.
I send my sales rep out with a baseball bat and smash all the windows at the mall parking lot and leave a flyer with my phone # on the dash. Some folks would call.

It appears I may have the MS key for this OS after all. Hopefully I can use the XP Pro CD I own to install.Before I do I will do more than reformat the drive. I will do a DOD wipe then reformat and reinstall.

 

[accguy9009]

The clamwin app from Major Geeks is denied instalation permission like everything else, not that I expected anything different. I have the XP Pro key, turns out I wrote it down when I maxed the memory out last year. and an XP Pro SP 2 disk. Hopefully they will work and play well together but the way things are going I doubt it. Time to do a DOD wipe.