fdisk -l says that my hard drive is 112 GB less then what it is??
 

I recently zeroed a hard drive, and after doing a fdisk -l, it says that the disk is 137.4 GB, while its supposed to be a 250 GB. To get to a terminal from a clean system, I used BasicLinux 3.40 from an Ultimate Boot CD. Could this be a problem with BL 3.4? Should I have used an other tool on the UBCD? Is the hard drive bad? I also have at my disposal a Hiren's Boot CD, Ubuntu 9.10, Ubuntu 9.04, and a Debian 5.0 install CD.

It is a bios issue would be my guess. See posts on 137 gig limit.

The problem is that your kernel probably only supports 28-bit addressing:

I don't think it is a BIOS issue because once the kernel boots, it no longer uses the BIOS for interfacing with the hard drive.

The version of BasicLinux you are trying to use has a 2.2.26 version of the kernel. That kernel is over 5.5 years old, and probably does not have support for 48-bit addressing.

Try booting from Ubuntu 9.10 if that is the latest thing you have.

It's either a kernel or bios issue. 137.4 GB is exactly the limit for 28 bit addressing. Whatever distro/hardware you're using must be ancient.

How do I load up a terminal window from a Live CD? I've had difficulty with the 9.10 CD, where I can't see the applications tab on the top, so is their a keyboard shortcut to open a terminal? I also have a Debian 5.0 CD, maybe I can use that?

Try <Ctl-Alt-F1> (or <Ctl-Alt-F2>, <Ctl-Alt-F3>, etc). These should open up virtual text-mode consoles 1, 2, 3, etc.

ALSO:
As far as the desktop being cut off - it sounds like the screen resolution needs to be changed:

1. Try hitting "F4" at startup; see if that lets you change to a different screen resolution

2. Look here for advice on modifying your "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" (either directly, or using various "tricks"):

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtop...=11182&start=0

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-cha...in-ubuntu.html

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-adj...on-ubuntu.html

'Hope that helps .. PSM

PS:
'Glad you found the reason for your original hard drive problem - that "BasicLinux" had an obsolete kernel, which only supported drives up to 137GB.

Ok that doesn't seem to work with Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD.....I can try with the 9.04, but is their something like that for the Debian CD? I don't think Debian lets me run it "live" ?

Save yourself some time and get System Rescue CD.