UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello, I was just reading around these forums when I had an idea, without being able to really answer my question for myself due to some circumstances, so hopefully someone can give me a hand. I have an old desktop PC that has served me very well. I got an Asus G73JH though, so I mostly used the desktop for downloading random crap that might have viruses and what not. However, the desktop succumbed to a virus that was a keylogger and deleted my file association registry (I think?) so everytime I try to open something, I have to right click, run as... administrator. I tried running my windows XP boot disc, but for whatever reason when I try to boot from CD it either says drive does not exist or there is no OS found. I played around in the BIOS some, but it didn't help. I tried formatting and booting from a USB stick but again it said there was no OS found on the USB sick. So it's been sitting there gathering dust for about a month now, and today I had the idea of wiping it and installing a UNIX OS. So my question is, how would I go about doing this? Do I install a UNIX OS to my USB stick and then boot from that, wiping all the data off? Do I need to free up some hardrive space and make a new partition? I apologize for the length of the post, I just wanted to add some details for my circumstances so I didn't get a "this has been asked 23239048 times, just search the forums" PC specs (that I can remember offhand) 1GB RAM 160GB HDD 3.2GHz CPU (I think?) currently running windows XP Thanks!

Just download and burn a CD install image, stick it in the CD drive, edit the BIOS to ensure the machine boots from CD if present and restart the box.

After that, follow the instructions on screen.

For first time users I'd recommend Ubuntu but if you try it and don't like it head over to distrowatch and try a few others

Perfect! I was hoping it would be that easy. Thanks a lot