Well that's fine if he doesn't mind losing his partition table!

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1

Would just remove the code in the MBR, not the partition records. If you have inadvertantly done this ken, you can use 'gpart' to scan your disk for partitions and rebuild the partition table.

I would also wipe out the first 512 bytes of any partitions (although not the first 512 bytes of a type '5' extended!) as this will remove bootloaders from them too (sometimes called PBR, or 'Partition Boot Record').

If you still can't remove it, it might be the result of a dying hard disk - I once had an old 850mb drive refuse to accept the DOS bootloader on the MBR, insisting on loading LILO instead (I was trying to re-use the disk in another machine) - even though the filesystem containing the kernel had long gone!

if he's reinstalling Fedora a zillion times, i made the assumption that he didn't care about that. but yes, you are correct.

I'd hate to think you've already raped your HDD from all that partitioning.

kunix84 wrote:

fedora wont even start.

What happens, exactly, after POST? What is being displayed on the screen? Does it get to the grub menu?

In any case, if you can boot with a Fedora CD/DVD and type "linux rescue", it should put you in rescue mode, and from there, you should be able to reinstall grub.