My dad wants me to reformat his laptop because it's so slow, and it has many viruses, spyware, and all types of malware on it. It's an HP laptop, and I don't think he has the disc that comes with the laptop. Is there a way to reformat that laptop without the CD?

I would suggest that you visit the malware forum (link below), and check to see if it is virus free.

Then return here, if needed, and we can furthur assist you.

Well I don't know if it's wrong or stupid of me to think like this, but the computer is just way too slow to even 'operate' at this moment so that would take longer than to just simply reformat the computer. And there aren't any files that my dad needs to keep on his laptop, so wouldn't it be smarter to just reformat it (quicker, simpler)? I might be wrong in thinking this.

If you're 100% sure you really want to re-format it, you can try Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN), which is a bootable hard drive 'scrubber'.
Have a look around, and post back here if you need any assistance using DBAN.

Available from http://www.dban.org/

Thanks,
Firebucket

If I were you I'd call HP help line and request replacement restore cd's for your particular laptop. They might charge a small fee but you might get lucky and they might send them to you for free. My brother had a Dell pc and lost his restore cd's that came with it and we called Dell and they agreed to send replacement ones free of charge just once for us, so its worth a try or just pay for them to send them. It will be much easier to have the HP restore cd's. With them you can just put the first one into the cd drive and startup the laptop and boot from the cd then click a button to restore the laptop to when it left the factory. But without the HP cd's you need to buy a copy of Win XP media center and install it then go online and download all the drivers for your laptops hardware and install them where as with the HP recovery disk it includes win xp media center and all the drivers needed for your laptop. So if possible just try to get the HP recovery/restore cd's for the laptop.

good luck

Hi libid21
If you format the drive and you do not have the disc how do you plan on getting an operating system back on the machine?.
As viprxx says you have to use cd from HP or you have to see if it has a restore partition - most laptops do.
If you reformat and do not have cd you will have an expensive paper weight.
Cheers
Peterm