Stuck half way through re-install

[longrawker]

Hello again.

So I was doing a reformat and re-instal earlier this evening, and everything was going smoothly. At the point where you have to restart your computer. My computer restarted, and I changed the boot order via bios back to HDD (the one that had windows half installed on it), rather than from my optical drive which it was set on before. This made sense to me at the time. The computer tried to boot from the HDD, but all that I got was a black screen after it cycled through identifying slave/master drives and such.

Realizing that I may have made a slight error, I left it to sit for 10 minutes, assuming that maybe things were just taking longer than usual and the black screen was only temporary. I was wrong. I decided to restart and this time boot from disk. I pressed any key, and It proceeded with the first part of the installation as far as the black screen that says "Setup is checking your hardware configuration" or something like that. Then the message was gone, and I was left with a blinking cursor (the one that looks like an underscore)

During the half successful windows install, I reformated and reinstalled onto what was (at the time of the half successful install) the slave drive. I did nothing to the what was (at the time of the half successful install) the master drive.

After I realized that I had a serious problem on my hands, I jumpered the drive with the half install on it to Master, and the other to slave. I also changed their positions on the cable accordingly. This did not do anything to remedy the situation.

The system in question is the one in my signature, and I would greatly appreciate any help or suggestions anyone can offer me.

Thanks in advance.

[flanzig1]

What I would do is pull one of the HDs and do a zero fill on the master HD then restart a fresh install.

[longrawker]

Originally Posted by flanzig1 What I would do is pull one of the HDs and do a zero fill on the master HD then restart a fresh install.

I don't remember how to do a zero fill, don't you have to be in command line to do that?

EDIT: nevermind, I just found out how to do a zero fill, and I don't think this is an option, since I don't have any OS at all right now. I do have an old copy of Red Hat Fedora laying around tho, so I think my next step is to try and install that, reformat and such with it. We'll see how that goes.

[longrawker]

Alright, so Fedora is up and runningish. Can you really do a zerofill on a HD that you're using? As in... if Fedora is on D, and I'm using fedora, can I do a zerofill on D? Doesn't make sense that it's possible...

Maybe I have the wrong Idea about neededing to be running the zerofill program within an OS. Maybe it can be put on a boot disk?

I'm a little confused here... haha.

[flanzig1]

Download Killdisk. Then load it to a floppy disk. Set a floppy to first boot and boot with the Killdisk in the floppy drive. It should open the Killdisk program and run the zero fill.