Do a "LOW LEVEL FORMAT" first, then fdisk, then format, and I bet that it will work without any probs.

Compaq laptops sometimes have a very small area of hard drive to store some BIOS related stuff, along with the installation BOM number for their "Quickrestore" CDs to verify from. It is a protected area of drive, so a low level format should free it up for you.

Hope this works for you.

Rudders