Quote Originally Posted by FatBoy
Hello gang. I'm brand new to Knoppix here. Kinda cool I must say. Anyway, I have a problem with my Dell Inspiron 8000 Laptop. There is currently no data on the drive as I have wiped it clean. My problem is that while trying to install a fresh version of XP I hit a snag. While I was formatting the drive, the formatter detected a disk problem of some kind and stopped. I tried the format process three times, each ending with the same error.

Can I repair the HDD using tools that are contained within Knoppix? Or can I place some type of disk repair tool on a floppy and run that tool from within Knoppix?

Thanks for the help. I did do a search, but I didn't find anything that met my needs.

Take care - Ride safe.

Fat Boy.
I think CrashedAgain gave you some good advice for reinstalling windows but it looks like your XP partitioning utility (whatever it is called) is having problems. You can do a low-level format of the drive w/ your Knoppix disc like so:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

Let me stress that you had better be sure that's the right drive!

In the past it was always a good idea to make windows parts w/ windows utilities and Linux parts w/ Linux utilities but I really don't know how true this is anymore. You can certainly partition the drive from Knoppix.