kernel panic and cd drive quit

[Matthew T.]

I totally FUBARed an install and got a kernel panic with a suddenly dysfunctional CD drive. Help!

[tushar_v_rum]

could u plz explain ur problem in more detail..

[Matthew T.]

I was able to get the machine to boot using Basic Linux on floppies. I want to run DBAN and start from scratch. What are the commands to wipe the hard drive and force a boot from the CD drive, please?

[devils casper]

What are the commands to wipe the hard drive and force a boot from the CD drive, please?

there are a lot of ways to *wipe* harddisk.
you can use GParted LiveCD to create/resize/delete partitions.
OR
boot up from LiveCD of any Linux distros, open Terminal/Konsole and execute this

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=521 count=1

[Matthew T.]

The hard drive data has been deleted. Thank you for your help.

I still can't boot from the CD drive, however. It seems to be receiving power, etc. Additional help would be much appreciated.