Hello to all, so glad I found this board.

Computer specs:
64 Bit Acer 5552-3680
AMD Athlon 11 x2 processor P340
320 GB HD, 4 GB Ram

Goal is to dual boot Ubuntu 14.04.02 64 bit lts and Windows 64 bit 7 Home Premium

HD may have bad blocks, trying to run shred to wipe HD.
Currently booted live with Ubuntu 14.04.02 lts i386

Do I need the 64 bit Ubuntu 14.04.02 lts ISO or will the 32 bit ISO i386 suffice?
How do I go about shredding the HD booting live with Ubuntu 14.04.02 lts i386

I am rather new to Linux and would appreciate some assistance.
Many thanks,

Ubbbuunto

First things first. Why do you think the HDD may have bad blocks? Are you sure you want to use this disk? You don't want to be running with a flaky disk, and disks are pretty cheap to pick up these days.

Personally (but speaking as a relative newbie) I would first do a diagnostic on the disk with the software provided by the disk manufacturer.

Then, if it looks ok, I would put the ISO of GParted (or partitioning program of your choice), and Darik's Boot and Nuke onto a bootable USB stick with YUMI.

Booting off the stick, I would nuke the disk (if you really feel that's necessary) with Darik.

Then, rebooting again off the stick, I would partition and format the disk as you see fit (with separate /home and swap partitions for the Linux side of things, and a separate NTFS partition for data to be shared between Linux and Windows).

Then I would install Windows 7 in an NTFS partition.

After that, Ubuntu 64-bit in an ext4 partition.

You can find other details, such as the install procedures and how much space to give to your swap and home partitions, on the web.

One of the problems with Linux is you get choice. Lots of choice. And opinions.

So here's mine.
I also wonder why you think you need shred. But, your gun, your foot.
The i386 iso will be fine for shred. If it isn't shipped you'll need to install it onto the live system; no problem. Then, assuming only the one hard disk in the system, enter this from a terminalLinux comes with a fine help system called man - to see the info for shred, enter this in a terminal (q will quit it when you've finished)

I think i386 means the Ubuntu live OS was meant for an Intel 32-bit processor. But you have an AMD 64-bit processor.
But never mind, if the live OS works, then you can use it to install a full Ubuntu OS onto your hard disk.
Your processor is 64-bit so you should select the 64-bit .iso to install Ubuntu. You may lose performance from your chip if you select the 32-bit.

'Shred it' is a Windows program - I don't think you can install it onto your Ubuntu live OS.
What you can do is install a linux program onto the live OS which will perform the same actions as Shred it.

I'm guessing you want to re-format a portion of your hard disk.
If so, you can boot the Ubuntu live OS and install gparted.
Then open gparted and create a partition on your hard disk (where you will install your new Ubuntu OS).
You can change the filesystem from NTFS to ext4 for example. This will re-format the partition and create a filesystem which Ubuntu is compatible with.
If there are any bad blocks, gparted will see it.

Obviously, you don't want to accidentally kill your Windows OS (which I presume is already on the disk). So familiarise yourself with the gparted tool before you use it.
Now that you have Ubuntu live OS, you can now use linux programs. They are downloaded from the Ubuntu repository and more secure than Windows programs downloaded from websites we don't know anything about.

Edit: Aha, I see from the above post Shred is also a linux pgm!