Maybe try the linux utility shred. You should be able to find it on any live cd, but I recommend System Rescue CD, it is a good CD to have around anyways. BTW, there should be something it tells you to type right after you start to look at the manual, do this and it will tell you how to use shred. Also, when you boot from the CD and see the boot prompt, type fb800 so that after using Shred you are able to use qtparted to make a new partition table (this is also wiped from the hard drive). I had a similar problem plus other ones with my harddrive and windows at one point, and this fixed it. Also, don't do the default 25 wipes, it takes days, altho my hard drive is 160GB. Probably would be good if you just set it to do 10 or so wipes. Also, correct me if I am wrong but future shop is only in canada. do you also live in canada? If so, Future Shop sucks :-P. Before I knew much about computers, they sold me a "gaming" computer that had a piece of crap video card in it and 256 MB of RAM. For the same price after I returned it at another store, I got the rig below. (I added the extra 256 to bring it up to 768 MB of RAM myself, I had an extra chip laying around).

I built my computer myself, I don't trust anybody but me to build a computer for me.
Yes, I do live in Canada.
I'll see what I can do with Shred, I've got a Knoppix CD lying around. I can't do it tonight though, it's already damn near 11:00...

Dude, you're like logged in here all the time Here in Sweden it's 6:45 in the morning (Monday). After you've had a good night's sleep, try that 'killdisk' utility that I linked to above too. What (it seems) that you need is something to low-level format your entire drive.

Good luck, sleep well
Martin

Killdisk worked. Took over two hours to run but I'm on Windows right now... I'm going to stick with it for now so that I can play games but if I ever put together a secondary box, it'll probably be Fedora (or whatever it's called when I finally do build it) that I put on it. Thank you so much for your help MartinN.

No problemo

I'm glad that your problems got sorted out. I'm also glad that you haven't ruled out Linux completely for the future. Welcome back here when you feel that the time is right for you. We're here waiting for you.

Regards
Martin