[hockeyfreak863]

I am having a problem and i cannot format with my winxp disks, it will but not go to the blue screen. I made a copy of dos, and put it on a cd, i am wondering how do i format the drive all i know if the command line FORMAT, But i dont know how to tell it to format the hard drive, it is booting under the cd drve , A:/

[DoubleHelix]

If Windows XP is installed, you can't format the drive from DOS. You'd have to use FDISK to delete the partition. The type of partition or how it's formatted shouldn't affect the ability to boot from the Windows XP disk. If you plan to reinstall, that's what you need to be able to do.

[hockeyfreak863]

windows is not installed, linux is and i am having a problem where it will not load, and it gives a blue screen when i try to format it through the linux disk

[DoubleHelix]

You can't format a system hard drive from within that system. I've not heard of a "blue screen" in Linux, so I don't know exactly what you're seeing

What's the ultimate goal? Repair Linux? Install Windows? Wipe the drive and toss it?

[hockeyfreak863]

the goal is to wipe it clean and install windows, i wouldnt call it a blue screen but it lists a bunch of random letters and numbers and technical info... so i assume it is a BSOD

[monckywrench]

I'd download a live Linux CD such as

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

and use gparted to delete the partitions.

Since Sidux has gparted (and cfdisk) and is fully featured, I'd prefer that so I could use the CD for much more.