How do I reformat or should I say the correct way of reformatting the whole hard drive that had Linux previously installed and reinstall it from scratch. I had Windows 98 on the drive before I installed Linux (It's my old WD 8 gig hard drive) I guess it must partition another drive for Linux. Now it only shows half of the drive capacity.

I want to have the whole hard drive devoted to Linux only. Could someone show me the correct on how to reformat the whole hard drive and re-install it again. Remember I'm pretty new to this. so go easy on the terminology. Detail would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Nick

just pop in the install CD and at the point where the system is asking you to choose partion for linux delete all the previous partitions and unformatted space, and then you can create new partitions taking up the whole drive.

I did that but I keep getting "Swap file needs to be" I have no clue what that means.