Help me format my hard-drive and reinstall windows after a corruption.

So, long story short, windows froze the other day, and since then it hasn't booted.

So, using the system recovery disc i've tried to re-install windows, but it goes straight to a choose partition window. I have one partition, which is the entire contents of the hard-drive, and the unpartitioned section is 8mb. I've had problems with HDD in the past.

I tried to format the partition to make a fresh install of Windows XP Professional, but it gets to 65% and freezes every time.

I've tried to run a diagonostic tool from a boot disc, to see if the HDD is fucked or what, but It goes into some DOS and then fails to boot anything.

I'm currently downloading a linux CD called KNOPPIX that was suggested on another forum.

What do you suggest I do?

My HDD is a Western Digital W...something. I had it written down but I've lost it.

 

It's most likely the boot disc has failed.

The best way is to get a new one.

It is very possible you have a hard drive failure as well. Boot with the windows cd(get one) and go into repair mode.

Type

Chkdsk /r

That might fix your problem w/o even reformatting.

 

What?
How do I get to that part, to be able to type it in.
And it hasnt frozen, I left it all night and it got to 66%. It shouldn't be that ridiculously slow though.

EDIT: By windows disc you mean the System Recovery CD?
That's what iv'e been using the whole time to format and try and reinstall.

EDIT2: Can I just delete the partition anyway? I don't need one, and it says it has nearly 240gb spare, with 1mb being used, which isn't right.
I get an error sayin : Load needed DLL's for kernel.
I can't access the recovery console, because it goes straight to the select partition window, which there is only one.