Reformat hard disk

Chris,

I have an IBM Thin Pad Laptop, that my kids were using and installed all kind of junk software.

I was trying to format/erase the entire hard disk and install WXP. I have a copy of MS DOS and try
to format the hard disk as I have done in the past (late 90'). In the past I typed "format c:\"
from DOS to reformat or erase the hard disk. I have tried the same command but U get "Bad command or file name".

Could you tell me how to erase/format my hard disk?

Thanks