Hard Drive Formatting - Unusual problem

[static244]

I just got my hands on an old computer from a friend, so I decided to throw linux on it and make a server. However, the distribution I downloaded messed up its hard drive and now i can't really do anything with it

Is there some program out there that I can throw on a floppy (the computer can't boot from anything else) to format a hard drive that has no viable operating system on it?


Thanks,
static244

 

[Law]

It would be easier if you just put in a CD drive. Use GParted or the Linux distro CD should do all the partition and formating for you.

 

[QuaziBee]

If it cant boot from a CD (like it doesn't have a drive and you don't have an extra) you can make a linux boot thumb drive easily enough. I'm not too familiar with linux so I can't remember exactly how, but I did it once to format a HD digital TV tuner. I remember using Slacks to create it.

 

[poorman]

You can even make a couple boot floppy disks that install the very very basic essentials to ram. Then it uses your network interface to download the rest of the distro. Look up Debian, they have a method to install over the internet.

 

[sPlAtOiD]

You can use a windows 98 boot disk. At the A: type fdisk. There you can see your partitions no.4 and Delete non dos partitions and dos partitions also.