Dell and Linux **SOLVED**

[Pandora's Box]

I recently aquired a Dell computer and put Mandrake 2005 on the hard drive to rid it of a virus. However, I can't find the virus. Perhaps I overwrite the virus with linux. the virus deleted the windows and NT folders before I put linux on it. Is there any way to find out if the virus is really gone before I oput WiWindows 2k back on the computer?

[techieMoe]

I would make sure that when you reformatted you also wrote zeroes to the empty space (perhaps more than once) just to make sure all the data is clean. Repartitioning doesn't always destroy the data, it just removes the references to it. I'm pretty sure there is a utility in Linux to do this, but I don't know of one off the top of my head. Whenever I'm doing things like this I generally use the utilities provided by the manufacturer of my harddrive, which can be found on discs like The Ultimate Boot CD.

[Pandora's Box]

Already fixed it. But thanks anyway!