From: joe@actionline.com
> I did find an old widows XP install disk

XP: The Widow-Maker!

> but ran painfully slow and locked up several times, so I suspected
> either a memory or HD problem. Then I tried installing Linux and
> that installed fine and worked for a while, but it also locked up
> at various stages.  So, I suspect either a memory or HD problem.

The last two times I ran into that particular symptom with Linux, it wasn't
anything to do with the disk or RAM.  It was the motherboard flaking out. 
That's always fun, since the motherboard on an x86 is expensive, annoying to
replace, and difficult to diagnose problems with.

> How can I check the memory and HD integrity on his old box? (or what
> else should I check?

memtest86 for the RAM.  badblocks -n -s /dev/NNN for the disk.  The other
thing that could be going wrong is the CPU, but modern CPUs rarely die if
their fans are working properly and they don't get too hot.  Make sure the CPU
and case fans are all working, and try lmsensors or the BIOS temperature
monitor after the thing's been on a while to make sure it isn't getting too
hot.  However, CPUs are relatively easy to replace, and if they're a few years
old, they're not that expensive either.

> How can I reformat the entire HD to try reinstalling again?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/NNN bs=1M count=1

NNN should be the whole disk, like /dev/sda or /dev/hda , not a partition like
/dev/sda1.  This'll zorch the partition table and the filesystem on the first
partition, so make sure you want to do that first.  

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see

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