hi guys, i have a dell optiplex that i installed ubuntu studio onto. i used it for a while and then i got a laptop and put debian on the laptop which has become my main computer and i love debian. because i dont use the dell anymore for ubuntu i would like to install windows 10 on it because i have some windows programs that i use ( run on mac parrallels.... which i hate) i bought windows 10 on a usb ad tried to install it clean but it tells me its the wrong format. how can i reformat my dell hd back to the windows format so i can install windows 10 on it? is there a format utility on linux? i want to wipe everything on the drive and reformat for windows 10 so i dont need to partition and duel boot or anything like that. or maybe theres a trick in the bios that will format the drive in wiondows format? any ideas?

find the harddisk of the system with "sudo sfdisk -l"
You see something like:
Then you just type sudo "dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda BS=1M"

After lets say 40 seconds just turn your system off and you are ready to install windows on a "factory new harddisk" (that is what its partition-tool tells itself during installation)

Do I just restart normally or do I restart with f12 boot key pressed down

dd: unrecognized operand BS=1M
Try 'dd --help' for more information.
francis@francis-OptiPlex-760:~$

At one point, Windows setup will give you the option to repartition. At that point, remove all the partitions and then continue.

Lowercase "bs"

just remember to DISABLE the Microsoft "Big Brother" all your information is OURS very insecure settings

now once you do lock 10 down there will be a lot of things it will no longer be able to do
like be usable

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1M
dd: failed to open /dev/sda: Permission denied

Most of the Ubuntu installation media will have the GParted partition manager on them so just use that to format as ntfs. I would think when you boot windows install media you would have an option to format but I haven't installed windows for years so, ...?

thanks guys I think I got it. My problem was I wasn't deleting the partitions. Once I deleted the partitions it began to install
Now I have to check out the big brother thing. Is it really that messed up?

dunnery,

Yes, big time!

You will probably not be able to buy Web User magazine in the States, but the top right corner of the front cover holds a clue:

http://www.webuser.co.uk/

okay, sorry, possibly lowercase, I was writing that out of my transient bio-memory

It's all good guys. I got it installed and I took your advice and disabled all the weird data collection stuff at the beginning. I don't acytially need most of the stuff on windows 10. I just need it to run one of my programs and it does that fine. Again, thanks to all for your help

Hi...

Glad you got it installed. If you would, please mark this thread as "SOLVED" by clicking on "Thread Tools" directly above your initial post. Thanks!

Regards...