unable to format hard drive

I have a HP Pavilion zv5240us laptop bought back about 3-4 years ago. The laptop was acting up so I decided to do a fresh install.

I wiped the hard drive clean with a program on Ultimate Boot CD. I then put in Win XP Pro CD and booted from it. Whenever it comes to format NTFS quick or regular method, after mid way, I get an error that says that I am unable to format hard drive and disk may be damaged.

I ran a few tests on hard drive from Ultimate Boot CD and from the Bios on the laptop. They didn't find anything wrong.

What do I need to do?

512 MB Ram
60 GB Hard drive
3.00 Ghz Pentium 4 Processor
Came with Windows XP Home

 

there may be an issue with the ide controller on the motherboard, which is probably worst case scenario, other than that, try another drive if you have one, i have seen a scanner miss things before so try another drive see if it works, also, try deleting the partition through winxp setup, if you havent tried that, recreate it then format

 

If you know what brand of hd you have download from their website their version of tools, burn to disc and boot from that cd, format with that. ed

 

Run a HDD Diagnostic utility, these are free from the HDD manufacture, some may be avaible on MG's front page

You can also use a manufactures free utility to format your HDD assuming it's still good

 

Fujitsu doesn't have a format utility. They do have a diagnostic for dos and windows. I hope to try that tonight. I think I should be able to do that through ultimate boot cd if I have it on a flash drive.

 

Fujitsu has an Erase Utility
http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/storage/hdd/support/utilities.html

 

You can also use Maxtor or WD, they just warn you that support is not there if you use it on any hard drive other than theirs. ed