It's a little unclear what you are asking, but regardless of whether you want to end up with linux or windows or something else, you typically want to run the installer for the operating system of choice and select to "replace the entire drive" with the new operating system. This will normally re-partition and format everything so you start from scratch, it's not technical at all. If you want to end up with linux, then run the linux install from media (DVD or USB or etc) and select the option like that. For windows, same story.
If you are attempting to add your drive as a separate drive under an existing operating system, it may be set to be the primary boot device so you end up booting into it. You said you already tried to boot from DVD media, but as another person already said, if the media is bad it would move on to the next option. You can probably press F8 or F12 or something like that from your POST screen to select your preferred boot device, you will need to read your BIOS documentation or look closely at the POST screen when your computer first starts to display content after a restart. POST is the computer's very first screen (Power On Self Test) if you didn't know. You can normally press DEL or F2 to get into BIOS and some other key like F8 or F12 often to get into a boot selection menu. I think not all BIOS systems support that though.
