User Feedback :: Howto format a hard drive with dsl on it

Having used dsl i thought i should try other distro`s, unfortunately after wiping windows from the hard drive & installing dsl the computer will not read or boot from any of the magazine cd`s.
Can anyone suggest a solution, this is my first installation of any operating system.So am extremely green on this subject.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance John Wayne

You could boot with the DSL cd and run the following command: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
This will wipe the entire disk (it assumes that hda is your disk). I don't know if it will allow reading and booting other cd's. If it doesn't, then you could check boot sequence in the bios.

Many thanks Skaos this worked a treat. have a new problem.
Have re-partitioned disk but even after changing bios cd`s are still not being read so cannot load a new operating system. This is the same with all magazine distro`s i have(4 in all)
any help please.

It sounds like you have never used the bios before?

when you exit the BIOS, there are usually two ways you can do it. The first is with esc. This does NOT save any changes you may have made. The second way is usually F10, but may be different. This was DOES save the changes and is the way you want to use.

Just to confirm, when you say 'changing bios,' you do mean changing the boot order so that cd is first?

Good morning Jhereg,
yes i do mean changing the boot order to CD.
Mineis a 5 year old laptop with an AMD K6 333mhz chip with 96 mb of ram.The procedure is slightly different to what you describe (as follows), F2 this takes you into bios, main menu to change boot sequence,exit and OK changes to save to bios chip.The disk i am trying to boot from is from Linux User & developer ubuntu 6.10.Have tried your suggestion with no results.
Thanks for the input john wayne

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