Unable to format drive

I have a dell 1545 inspiron and I am trying to format all the drives and do a clean install of vista until I get windows 7 pretty soon. I am doing a clean install because I found a rootkit (gecko-crash) when I ran a housecall online scan. I was able to format the F drive which was vista recovery drive. But D is a system drive and contains some system files, some of which I don't recognize and one folder is titled 'Boot'. I can copy other files to D(which means viruses can copy themselves to it) and I have to format it because it might be infected as well but can't be formatted.. I keep getting 'can't format D system drive' messages.

Btw I have ran spyware doctor scan, online housecall scan and nothing has showed up. But the system was kinda slow and I have to do a clean install now. Any ideas?

Are you using the Dell recovery DVD'?

I am using vista dvd which came with the laptop. First of all I think D is the boot drive and might contain Dell-specific boot sequence files and deleting them might mess up the system?

Second when I choose 'advanced' in installation.. then I would have a choice to either install it on C or D drives(two drives left in my computer after formatting others). I would like to choose C but I guess I have to first format D and then restart and go again for C. Sounds complicated but I hope I am making sense and hope it works somehow.

Would deleting D drive affect my dell laptop? I mean D drive might have boot system files that might be dell-specific like the dell graphics show up on startup etc... Don't know if that is ture but just a thought.

dfs said:

Would deleting D drive affect my dell laptop? I mean D drive might have boot system files that might be dell-specific like the dell graphics show up on startup etc... Don't know if that is ture but just a thought.

As you are use the Dell Recovery DVD's, you can delete all partitions with no affect.

If you're not planning to Dual Boot Vista, I would wait until you get Win7, then clean your HD using DISKPART "Clean All" from the Command Line of the Win7 DVD: Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Store your files first on an external or another HD which should be unplugged during install. Then boot Win7 installer to run DISKPART Clean All, followed by Custom Install using Drive Options to partition and format before install.

After you have Win7 installed immediately install MS Security Essentials, plug back in the data drive and scan it. Then you can transfer your files into Win7 or create a separate data drive from the OS/programs drive as shown here: Data Partition

If you can't wait until Win7 arrives, follow the same procedure to clean reinstall Vista: move data onto external or another HD which is unplugged during install, wipe the HD with DISKPART from Vista DVD Command Line, Custom Clean Install Windows 7 using Drive Options to Create and Format partitions, install MSE immediately after install to scan data.

use dban like the other member has stated

this will reformat the drive 100%