Can you “test” LL from USB on a computer with a virus?

[richtea]

Double-check trinidad points 2) and 4) above. This is why:


ad 2)
UEFI proves troublesome while installing Linux. As long as the hardware is old enough not to have it, you can ignore the issue.


ad 4)
"Virus" is as general as to be meaningless; note especially what trinidad says about ransomware. If there is malware on the computer, identification would be useful. There is anecdotal evidence of nasty stuff hiding, e.g., in CMOS clock, not just HDD.


I have always used DBAN on older Windows machines, to full satisfaction. It has also worked for you thus far, so why not stick with it?
Or not - overwriting the HDD with a Linux distro may well be sufficient, so you might skip the nuking stage altogether.


As for deleting all and sundry sensitive data from HDD, there is only one safe method: physical destruction. Depending on the capacity of the particular HDD with XP (Vista got obsolescent in 2009, so it may be long in the tooth indeed), another option might be replacing it with a brand new SSD. It need not be costly these days, and the old computer will run fast with it.