when trying to install red hat i ran into a big problems

i was gonna create 3 partitions boot,/, and swap. but when it went to format them before installin it crapped out, gave me an error, and rebooted my pc. when it came back up it ofcourse said no operating system found.

so i tried to install again, but red hat gave me and error on the drive sayin bad partition table. I loaded up partition magic and the same thing happens.

how can i fix the partiontable? does a low level format clear all that out?

any help will be appreciated. thnx in adv. : )

**** _IF_ you really need a low-level format, do it with one of the utilities provided by the HDD vendor, NOT one of those flaky BIOS ones. The Shrike will trash you bad if you don't obey. ****

But if you could give a clue as to how you partitioned your HDD, what partitions are already on it, which drive conroller (chipset of the MoBo would be a good start), and which drive - someone might have some wisdom for you. (no guarantees).

1.Follow mcleodnine's advice first.

2.If both Partition Magic and the Redhat installer are giving you the same message, you should probably do a low-level reformat (provided no data that you care about is on the disk, because it will be wiped). Before you do that though, try using the fdisk utility. If it recognizes the drive's partitions at all, delete them, save the changes, and reboot. This will rewrite the partition table, and if it works, will take much less time than a full low-level format.