How to reformat hard drive on my Compaq Presario CQ50 laptop?

Hi, I have an old compaq presario cq50 and i need to wipe/reset the hard drive to get vista on. So my vista got a virus which would not let me connect to the internet or it disabled the wifi chip, i'm entirely sure. Anyhow i installed linux mint 16 from a dvd and wiped the drive to put linux on as the main system. Now i just need to revert that. I put in the vista disk and had it go wipe the drive and install vista. However, windows said the partition was invalid and it had to be something else. I figured i could wipe the drive. I googled ways to wipe it but i could not get any to work. Linux is NOT on a partition, it is on the full drive. I need to make a windows compatible partition. I have the product key on the bottom of the computer and the recovery disk.