[plug] IBM Thinkpad

[Brad Campbell]

On 01/12/13 10:20, lranderson wrote:
>      It was hoped that I could run a linux operating system ie Debian
>      all my attempts so far to overwrite Windows has failed.

Debian is pretty well behaved from that perspective. It tends to not want you to overwrite an 
existing system unless you know enough to get it to.
Probably the *easiest* route (for me as it avoids booting a debian cd to have a close look at the 
menus) is to get the Debian cd up, switch to another console (something like ctrl-alt-F2/3/4) to get 
a shell prompt, then

dd if=/dev/zero bs=512 count=1 of=/dev/sda

Which will (assuming your disk is sda - the chances are pretty good) destroy the partition table, so 
when you hit the Debian partitioner it will say "Hey this is a clean slate, lets set this up for you".

There are other ways that don't use a 5lb hammer to crack a walnut, but that was the quick and dirty 
one I came up with.

Of course you could use Ubuntu instead. Its partitioner will quite happily blitz anything on the drive.