(Redirected) Inspiron 15 with windows 10 problem

Hi

in 2015 I bought an Inspiron 15 7000 series laptop. It originally had windows 8. In June or July of 2016, I took advantage of Microsoft's offer to upgrade it to a Windows 10 via online. I got it to work fined. In October of 2016, I suddenly got a blue screen with the message 'no boot device found'. I used the diagnostics tool but nothing resolved the problem. I can go to the command prompt and I can see an x:\ and I am able to display the contents of the drive. 

I bought a usb-based windows 10 in order to just start from scratch but during installation, I end up with a display saying  no drive detected. 

I now want to do a low-level format, that is, erase everything in the drive, treat it like a 'virgin' drive and then install my usb-based windows 10 software.

When I am in command prompt, I am unable to execute the format command because the system gives me a 'drive is protected' msg.

What tool could you recommend I use to low-level the hard drive so I can install my usb-based windows 10?

Thanks.

vwmdabbler