Format window partition from linux how?
 

hi,
I have dual boot on my system. XP and fedora core 3.
But somehow my XP got corrupted. and it keeps getting stuck at the XP welcome screen. I would like to format this partition from linux. is it possible?
is there a way to access the data on XP?

Thanks in advance!:)

Several livecd distros like Knoppix already have ntfs support so you could access the XP data. You DO NOT want to format the partition before you get the data saved.
If your XP system is corrupted, it looks like a restore from backup is in order. If you don't have a backup ( for shame! ) then a re-install.
The XP install has a partitioning / format section which is best to use IMHO.

can i just delete the partition hda1 containing windows xp? and is it possible to use this partition for linux?

Yes, you can delete the partition and re-create as a Linux partition. If you aren't familiar with the command line fdisk and mkfs.ext3, you might find it more attractive to use the GUI tool called qtparted.

Yeah, you can. Just remember to back up anything you want first. I used cfdisk to delete my NTFS partition and then just made a new partition in its place with the filesystem type as "Linux" (as I wanted to use ext3). To format it, there are different commands depending on the filesystem you want to use: mke2fs for ext2, for example.