Okay, my laptop has been stuffed full of viruses in the system files for years thanks to the guy I got it handed down from. Programs and files are deleting themselves like crazy, so I'm starting over.

The issue is, it's so damaged, it won't even let me do THAT.

I've tried Darrik's Boot and Nuke, but it always freezes on "Loading (something).bzt....." . I've tried booting Linux Zorin from a flash drive, but it refuses to boot from a flash drive- even when I change the boot order in the BIOS to put USB devices first, it just goes straight to Windows XP.

Any advice? It's a good computer. It's just stuffed with crap.

If you can download Malwarebytes, do it. That should be able to delete a TON of the viruses with the scanner in it... And it's free for scanning/removal, so I'd say you should use it.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

I doubt that will help. The guy who had the laptop before me paid $80 for a professional virus removal job before giving it to me, and it didn't do squat.

I'm not even trying to clear the viruses anymore. I'm just plain trying to wipe the whole system now.

Delete System 32

Alright, really, Google is your friend on this one.

The guy who had the laptop before you was a complete retard.

Just reformat the whole damn thing.

...which is exactly what I'm trying to do right now.

Have you tried burning the OS installation onto a disk and booting from disk? Maybe something's f*** up with the boot from flash drive or you're just doing it wrong (most likely the latter)

I'm trying to boot Linux Zorin, which is 1.4gb. A disk won't work because the highest capacity I have with those is 700mb.

genuine question

did you trying googling it

and looking hard enough

because chances are you're much more likely to find someone who can help you that way than you can by asking people here

I looked on Amazon and the first result is a 16 gb flash drive for $10. Memory should not be an obstacle. Unless the virus somehow infected your MBR (which I doubt), a complete re-install of your OS should do it. Darin's boot and nuke is great for erasing drives, but if you are unable to get it to work properly, it's not really necessary. During the windows install you can choose to wipe a drive. It's not quite as thorough as DBAN, but it does the job.

pretty much a summary of every tech question here ever