How to remove all LVs VGs and Partitions On All Drives Before Installing 12.04

Just for the sake of this question, I just encountered the same problem and here's how I fixed it (all these commands were entered from a live session) :

sudo vgdisplay

then I located the group name to delete

sudo vgremove <groupname>

said yes to all questions.

Then, I could manually format the whole device thing with GParted.

I was unable to delete a partition because it was in use by a Volume Group (system). I was told it was unable to delete that Volume Group because a Physical Volume was missing.

Once I ran vgreduce --removemissing system I was able to delete the Volume Group and then the partition leaving me right where I wanted to be.

Thanks for the suggested answers, they got me thinking on the right track.

All you need to do is choose the "use whole disk" option in the installer. It will wipe out whatever is on the drive.