Help needed with harddisk errors at boot !!

[svarreby]

I did boot with Partition Magic to erase all partitions, and start from scratch but PM told me that I had partition table errors (or something else) so I could'nt proceed.

Later I installed Mepis on that harddisk and all went fine until I rebooted after the installation. I got this message:

Warning: unable to open an initial console.
Kernel Panic: No init found. Try passing init=option to kernel

What tool should I use to fix my harddisk?

I have several distros on CD's. The best way would be to boot on one of them and then initiate some software package to correct these errors.

[kevinalm]

I would suggest downloading the disk utility suite from the manufacturer of your hd, and using that to check for problems with the drive.

[raz0rblade]

I had a similar problem with one of my disks I was playing around with in a RAID. This fixed it:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX bs=512 (replace X with your drive letter)

Let it run for about 5mins and kill it.
Worked fine for me :D

What it does it erase the mbr and everything on the entire disk leaving you with a nice and clean disk :)

[je_fro]

try passing "init=/sbin/init"

[adikgede]

I agree with je-fro. b4 you go and reformat your driver again why not see if you can't help the kernel find init first before you assume that there is a problem that requires disc maintenance.

[svarreby]

I have installed Mepis on another PC with the same result :(

The default bootloader is Lilo. Any help would be welcome :) because now I'm in the Windows-Only-Zone ... and I would like to get away from this scenario :)))

[Satanic Atheist]

Send me your e-mail address on a PM and I'll send you ClearDrv. Boot a Windows disk and run it on the partition of your choice. It'll flatten sector 0 and return the drive to "New from manufacturer" state. You can then repartition and reinstall.

James