fdisk/format linux without floppy support?

i have a laptop with Red Hat installed on it. the floppy bay is broken. im looking for a way to fdisk, format, or debug this system without floppy support. i tried booting from a bootable windows xp cdrom at start up. but it just loads redhat normally everytime. and the correct boot order in bios is set. i just need a way to get linux off, and xp on, without floppy support. someone suggested running windows from inside linux. but im having trouble mounting my cdrom. i also have a ext. usb floppy drive.. but its of no help to me because bios doesnt detect usb.. anyone have a suggestion?

 

This is a BIOS issue. I would double check that the CDROM is set to boot first, or buy an internal floppy drive.

You could also boot with the Redhat CD then fdisk /dev/hda, but again you need to set the CDROM as the first boot device in the BIOS.

BTW, are you using LILO or GRUB? And what kernel are you using?(uname -r if you don't know which one)