Wiping the boot sector of a drive

A nifty trick (thanks to Vadim) if you need to wipe the boot sector of your drive:

1. Boot machine off Knoppix CD
2. Open terminal and type the following command to write 512 bytes worth of zeros to the beginning of the disk

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 count=1 bs=512

3. Remind Vadim he *is* a GOD
4. Reboot machine with an OS installer CD