Ok - so here is the problem.

my friends computer is all kinds of fucked up, two partitions, two bad copies of windows xp. I cant boot it, & I cant slave the hard drive and boot it (which is strange because my other hard drive is working fine on another system)

so im down to a last resort:

I have installed DSL (damn small linux) on a 2GB thumb drive, and it works.

how do I completely flash the hard drive once I am inside of my linux distro?

after further investigation: let me clarify

I only want to format the drive for windows re-installation.

why not boot off of a live cd system like Ubuntu or knoppix or something...the other thing is i think every linux distro has a fdisk capability or cfdisk capability from the command line. it isn't all that hard to do really...If you wish to format the system for windows install, why not just boot off a windows cd and use that to redo the drive?

or look into gparted

im running DSL live from a thumb drive -

what is the command (or a place I can find the command) for formatting?

to format the drive? I don't think you can format in NTFS or Fat 32 from Linux bro...i'd just use fdisk or cfdisk to create what i needed

I'm having sort of a similar problem with my other computer.. i can get the disk formatted ( the windows CD will let me do that ) . But when i start installing my XP, it won't copy certain files. And both my copies of XP are valid legal ones.
If your problem is very similar to this, it may be a boot virus. or something with the motherboard. I haven't had a chance to try a new MB due to lack of funds.. And flashing my bios is a pain..

suggestions -

put your windows xp cd in, change your bios to boot from cd first and use that to format the xp partitions.

download a Preboot environment operating system (there are many) that has hard drive management software included (like partition magic or something) then burn it to cd, slap in, change bios to boot from cd first, and use that to reformat your hard drives.

change the hard drive to slave at jumper (or use Cable select) put in the hard drive from your other computer as master and try boot into that windows and format the drive within windows if you can.

download a windows 98 floppy boot diskette, download FDISK, place together and slap that in. tell the bios to boot from floppy. run FDISK.

i dont have any experience with that distro of linux so i can't really suggest to you anything to do with that. sorry.

I solved the problem,

there is a bootable app called "Boot and Nuke"

it loads, decompresses some sort of linux shell and then allows you to zero write your drive to various levels of security (DoD...etc)

its all good now, except im getting a generic windows error - which is weird because windows is running fine. it just says "windows error - send report?" and when I say "dont send report" it goes away and doesnt bother me for a few hours.

I think I just need to find another copy of windows.

That's just XP being retarded. Anytime any kind of program has any kind of error, it attempts to send MicroSoft a bunch of info about the error, program, and OS structure. It can be turned off somewhere, but I don't remember where.

You cant format either HD from DoS or the BIOS?

That would be an id,ea too. But some BIOSes don't have that option.

All this computer talk is getting me horny, I think I will add an Ubuntu partition to my Imac along side OSX Leopard, and Win XP.

Kinky.
Have you had any issues with leopard? I've heard it's a little buggy. And that there are some security issues.

some minor issues, like oh, my widgets no longer work right.and I had some screen tearing at 1st but it seems ok now. My spotlight search hides behind the menu bar sometimes too.

So, just minor glitches, then? I was thinking of upgrading, but I'm not even sure my G3 will handle it.