Can I Partition my hard drive

[laurence w]

hello
I have a Acer Aspire 4 years old which got ransomed and I have not been able to clean it out . My question ,could I partition the hard drive and install a new version of windows 10 inside that new partition. and still be confident that the new partition will not be corrupt . I cannot use the Acer software that allows you to format the drive and reinstall windows 7 because i get an error message that the" drive is not able ". I have backed up all documents .
I am been thinking of using a thumb drive to install Windows 10

[DaveLembke]

Id use Linux to wipe that drive clean, deleting all partitions. Then use Windows 10 media after hat to install 10 to it clean. If you try to make a partition on a drive that has one of its partitions hostage its going to be a big mess of wasted space and potential for whatever you got hit by traveling to the new partition.

Use of a Linux Mint or Ubuntu burned ISO to DVD you can boot off this DVD and then when it boots to the desktop of the distro you can then access this infected drive and delete all partitions. Once they are deleted just back out of any other actions and this should be good enough for you to be able to reboot computer and use the Windows 10 install media to install clean and use the entire drive for 10.

New Partition will not be corrupt going this route. This should also kill off any MBR virus's as for the drive will no longer be bootable until a new OS is installed to it in which the MBR (Master Boot Record ) gets written.