Hello all, hope you can help.

Long story short, I have in my posession a computer which only has Fedora core 2 on. No other partitions, No dual boot sequence, no nothing. To all intents and purposes, its a completely new machine with a fresh, relatively blank HD.

I want to remove Fedora, and install windows XP. I know, i know! its not for me, its for the missus.

How do i do this?

Ideally i'd like to end up with an empty computer, a blank HD, no boot loaders, just plain ol' crappy windows.

Searching google for this is like needle in a haystack, however this forum seems to be very helpful.

I know enough linux to get my way around the filesystem and do menial tasks, but not enough to fix this, so I welcome reasonably complicated how-to's.

- I'm aware of the existance of Grub, which is what seems to be coming up when I try to boot from the windows cd. I don't know how to use it though.

- I'm also aware linux partitions are invisible to the XP cd, which is mainly the problem since the grub loader only shows one possible OS to boot/modify - Fedora.

Any help much appreciated

There are several ways to do this.

The easiest?

Pop in the Fedora install cd #1, or dvd and boot, just as if you are going to do an installation.

At the main boot screen, type in;

linux expert (or is it just expert?).

Run the install until you get to the partitioning menu.

Choose expert partitioning until you get to the actual list of partition(s) on your drive.

Assuming that you have one partition on the drive which houses Fedora, choose that partition--> edit.

Partition the drive/partition as fat32.

Allow the actual partitioning to take place.

Back out of the installation at this point, or remove the Fedora cdrom disk.

Replace the cdrom disk with a full Windows installation disk, reboot and install Windows XP.

"- I'm also aware linux partitions are invisible to the XP cd, which is mainly the problem since the grub loader only shows one possible OS to boot/modify - Fedora."

Yes, because grub is installed to the Master Boot Record on the drive. Re-formatting the partition should solve this. Since you made a fat32 partition on the drive, Windows should now see the partition that you made and allow a full installation.

There are other methods that can work, depending if this fails for some reason, to do the job.

Method 2

Don't tell anyone that I referred to this article!

V.helpful reply, thanks.

Alas, fedora was installed by an overzealous mate who lives 150 miles away and didn't think to supply us with the boot cd. So i'll have to try the MS support article route, I think.

Thanks again. I'll return if it all goes tits up.

Well, you could download the first installation iso of Fedora and burn it to a cdrom disk. That is, if you have access to a cd burner and know how to do this.

Better yet, download Mepis Live cd and use qtparted, the partitioning utility that comes with Mepis, to do the job.

There are also floppy disks that may do the job. Let us know what you choose to do.