can't fdisk

Hi Folks - Got a strange one here. Someone gave me an old but working Gateway. Want to wipe it but it's pretty messed up. Could not use the normal procedure to create a boot disk, did it manually, boots ok, but fdisk just freezes. Gateway has given me the standard vanilla instructions, no result there. Thoughts?

Thanks a lot.

download a bootdisk from boot disk.com to fdisk or you can use partition magics boot disk to del the partition. If youre gonna install xp just boot from the cd and del the partition from there.

Here are acouple things to try.
1.Check the bios to make sure HD is mentioned correctly.
2.Reset the bios back to defaults.
3.Boot to a clean Win98SE bootdisk mentioned by phishhead's post and debug the hard drive.The link here will get you going.
http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk/HardDrive.htm

What Hard disk do you use? Can download Seagate Discwizard or Western Digital Data Lifeguard tools etc to wipe out and partition the drive.