Have to format the whole drive (a:format c
using that dos command or fdisk. Then you have to decide what kind of operating system you want to put on it. Post the specs here and you'll get tons of recomendations I'm sure. This is of course easier if the boot disk you are using has cd-rom drivers on it. Installation of the newer Windows operating systems is pretty easy, as I recall you can also format the hard drive from the Windows 2000 or Windows XP disks. Hard to really give more advice or be more specific before I know what you want to do and what kind of laptop it is....