do and don't agree
these posts are right ... and probably the best solution
but sometimes you can use a bit of a disaster as an excuse to do a "propper" job and rebuild a machine from scratch (I do mine about enery 12-18 months).
fdisk is for win 9`5/98 machines
2000, XP and Vista only need the install disc
and even better ... many 'puters these days come with a restore disc or partition which will do the job automatically.
your chum may be a little rash .... but I could simpathise with the idea if you fancy a steeper solution