Reformat laptop hard drive using only a flash drive?

[scotts06]

Hello,
I messed up my hard drive while on vacation and all I have is another laptop and a 16GB flash drive, and all I want to do is reformat the whole drive so I can install a new os on it. I tried the Ubuntu live cd, but it just goes to a blank screen after 10 seconds of loading. I also tried the Ultimate Boot cd but it gives me an error when I boot off of it. I got the AVG rescueCD to boot and work off of the flash drive, but I don't see an option to format the drive on that.

Can someone recomend me a new tool that can be booted off of the flash drive or how to use the AVG rescueCD to format it?

Thanks!

 

[jcaulley_74]

The first question I have is what are you going to use to install the new OS on the machine. All of the windows install discs have the option to format the drive for you, Ubuntu as well. If you can't boot off the installation material, you probably have a different, or bigger problem than a messed up harddrive.

 

[scotts06]

I was doing this http://strangelyperfect.tv/6415/how-to-convert-a-dynamic-disk-to-basic-disk-in-windows-7/ (using the HxD disc editor, which is the dumbest thing I have ever done) and windows 7 would just blue screen while loading and then restart the computer. Im thinking that this is somehow messing up Ubuntu live cd(I dont have my windows 7 disc with me) and I am hoping if I can just nuke the disc and format it that it might fix my problem, but maybe I am wrong?

 

[internetlad]

sounds like your optical drive might be flaky too, or there is an inherent hardware issue with the hard drive that is causing an issue between it and the motherboard.

I've never seen a windows 7 install blue screen, it's happened on XP. Do you have the error code it spits out when it BSODs?

Worst Case scenario you might have that chinese bios virus that was on the board yesterday if you're having all sorts of problems outside of windows itself.

 

[scotts06]

Im not using the optical drive, I only have a flash drive, no discs. I cant get the error code from the BSOD because I saw it flash for a second and then the computer restarts. I am positive this is not virus related as it happened right after I messed with the HxD disc editor.