Wiping hard drive ?

It depends what goodies are already on your new PC. Personally, I would create a backup of all files on your new PC, (save them to disk or another hard drive), so that I could browse through them at a later time. I would also like to know what Hardware I had because I would need to know this later on when installing drivers. Finally, if I then wanted to wipe the Hard Drive, assuming it was called C:\, I would open the command prompt, (usually in START>ALL PROGRAMS>ACCESSORIES), and then type FORMAT C:\ and then respond yes or OK to whatever comes up next.

P.S. I'm no expert, (although I am a bit of a smartass), so if I was you I'd either learn some more from these forums, or get a mate to sort it out so that you can blame him when it all goes pear shaped.

I'm all for formatting new PCs as they usually come loaded with a ton of crap. Formatting and reloading allows you to customize everything exactly how you want it, not how Dell thinks it should be. Make it easy on yourself and make sure you have all your drivers, your Windows CD, and any program CDs before you do the format. If you don't know what you are doing, have one of your geek friends help you.