Computer ****ing me up the wall.

[ValiantKnight]

I was just merely saying that the "CD" should be able to format/reinstall on any drive, regardless of corruption unless to my knowledge.... there's
A. different unknown data format on the drive.
B. errors on the drive that chkdsk can fix.

If its not NTFS, but FAT instead, then you would merely need a windows 98 bootup disk I would think, anything that can boot the system that has chkdsk on it. Substitute the Win98 bootup disk instead of the NTFS4DOS bootup disk, and you may need to manually put chkdsk on the win98 disk(it's chkdsk.exe and its in the c:\windows\system32 folder by default). Windows XP full version CDs have chkdsk on them and a recovery console, but its a little work to get to, and you have to know the administrator password. Typically these days if you bought your system from Dell, or another mass producer, you never know the administrator password, as they create a second account called owner...

I'm a little sketchy but I think to get to recovery console, you'd boot up from Windows CD, try to repair, and it should give option of recovery console or automatic repair?..

Console brings you to a DOS-type prompt, and you can run chkdsk from there I think, but am not sure.

I merely suggesting chkdsk because you say it freezes during formatting, which sounds like bad sectors/etc.... otherwise go with some of the other suggestions.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058