Harddrive issue perhaps.

[DAMINK™]

Just curious if anyone has tried installing 7 on a harddrive and then delete partitions and try install xp?
The reason i ask is i did exactly this and now i cant for the life of me get xp to install. I can get 7 to install just fine?
It appears there is a small partition that i cant delete. Even under a linux enviroment. It shows like 99.8% available and this little bit i cant access.
I can delete all partitions seemingly but when i create 1 single one with max volume a small portion remains.
Under windows and linux no luck. Its not the CD as i was able to install easily onto another drive. Its certainly appears to be the harddrive.
I thought perhaps a few bad sectors perhaps were the problem but i still dont see how this would cause it??
The main symtom i have is the install works fine. Then it copies all files over etc and requires a reboot to continue install. Well after reboot i get a os error!

I was actually thinking of trying the tool omni posted about deleting a harddrive with that floppy disk. I cant remember the name of the tool.
But any opinions would be great. Thanks.

[Viciousness]

This doesn't actually help your issue much but I thought I'd mention it. If you have a newer processor and Windows 7 Ultimate you can just use "xp mode" in a virtual machine instead of dual booting. You can download it for free from Microsoft.

[Codine]

Have you tried formatting the drive with dban? Might work, let me know if it does