please do not ignore what I have just written,have tried both operating systems and have found the same issue as our friend with the compaq,which is why I gave him all info relevant to access,reformat and repartition his drive to a state it will accept windows,Nuff said. -_-
current o/s is fedora 10 upgraded to 11 with windows xp dual boot its all good!!
Kanotix can be found here.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kanotix