Problem with partitioning -- How to format hard drive andreinstall Windows?

[akonstam at trinity.edu]

On Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 10:37:18PM -0500, Thom Paine wrote:
> On 11/15/05, peter wu <pwu95 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for your kind reply, Eddie.
> >
> > But as I said, I tried to boot from the Windows XP CD. I get the following
> > msg:
> >
> > "Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuraton..."
> >
> > Then the computer hangs.
> >
> 
> I normally boot from the fedora cd and type linux rescue.
> Then I skip upping the network interface, and skip mounting the partitions.
> 
> I finally get to a prompt and I type this to clear the drive.
> 
> # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M count=100
> 
> This is for an IDE drive. If you have serial ata, you will likely need to
> substitute hda for sda.
> 
> Basically this blows away the partitioning information, and makes the drive
> like new. You should then be able to get the windows cd to boot fine.
This blows away more than that since the MBR  is only 512 bytes long.-- 

--

-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
telephone: (210)-999-7484