After struggling with another problem, I decided to flatten and reinstall my linux partition. The debian installer causes my machine to kernal oops at various points in the install process. I haven't been able to find a pattern, but I can't get past installing the base system. I used to have a working windows partition, but grub won't boot it since I wiped the old linux install off (I get an error that's something like "Unknown file system (0x7)), so I can't test my hardware very easily. Before flattening, I was able to use windows heavily without any problems. I know I need more information to diagnose this. What can I tell you?

I suggest to fix the Grub problem by re-installing a working bootloader from M$, use the M$ disk to boot from and choose the Repair option. Then do fdisk /mbr to fix the MBR and boot Win-OS again. Then re-install Debian from scratch.

Ran fixmbr, and now I have a disk boot failure


Edit: Fixed the problem, I'm in windows now. Is there a good way for me to test the hardware for whatever was inducing the kernel oops messages?

Try a Live CD like Knoppix. It has excellent hardware recognition, based on Debian. Your install problem was most likely related to an error on your part. You've learned the hard way that ruthlessly whipping a Linux partition clean isn't the best of ideas