knoppix to rescue windows :o

[ilkerka]

hi
i waz trying to fix my friends computer up. when i was formatting(win xp) it gave a hdd problem so it terminated. when i rebooted windows didnt work i cldnt do anything. i put knoppix on it everything is working fine except hdd :).
The reported error was:
mount:I could not determine the filsystem type,and none was specified

so he wants windows xp on his laptop, can i use knoppix to delete everything on hdd and install win xp. thnx

[OErjan]

you can certainly delete everything, but installing XP?? no, not without magic.
to delete everything just use QTparted and repartition the drive, sadly the errormessages indicate a failing hdd.
try reformating with QTparted and if that fails you can try with a new hdd,
they can cost as little as 60€ (for a 20G) I would consider it an option,
On the other hand I do not know how confortable you feel about opening a laptop to replace a faulty HDD...
not an easy task on some models (I should know I have opened hundreds)

[foamrotreturns]

If you're fine with deleting everything on the hard disk and starting from scratch, there's a low level format command you can do:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
this copies zeroes to the hard disk device until it runs out of space. It will take several hours.

[OErjan]

on slower systems actually DAYS