I loaded Fedora Core 5 onto my Dell Inspirion laptop to try it out. Now, I want to reinstall Windows XP onto the drive but when I boot from the XP CD the screen says it's going to explore the hardware configuration. The drive light goes on and stays on, the machine locks up completely. I can reinstall the Core 5 but not the windows. I am now running the Core 5 on an extra desktop and I want the laptop to be exclusively Windows again.

Someone suggested the BIOS may have been altered leading the Windows disk into nowhere'sville.

Any suggestions??

Are you reinstalling windows with the laptop manufacturer's restore disk and was there a "restore" or "hidden" partition on that hard drive before you installed fedora?

The Windows I'm loading is from another machine. I got the laptop used and I'm not sure how the drive was originally loaded. Also, I've tried to use a legit copy of Windows upgrade and it does the same thing.

Windows needs some free space - or a partition it knows about FAT/NTFS - to install into. Let's see the output from this

First backup all data. Then go to www.majorgeeks.com and down load a program that will format the hard drive and remove any partitions on that hard drive. Then try to install windows. It's always best to wipe the hard drive when going from linux to windows.

I looked for hours on how to do this same thing and everyone has an answer that tells you to use a boot disk or some other piece of software. If you want to completely remove Linux do the following. I has Fedora 8 on my machine as the only OS and it work like a charm for me. Alot easier than getting extra software or using a bootdisk. I knew there had to be a way to do it while using the Linux OS.

1. Log into you Linux OS
2. Open up a terminal
3. Change to root (su -) *Remember the "minus" after su
4. issue the command "cfdisk"
5. delete all partitions (somewhat of a GUI)
6. Turn off machine
7. Boot with Windows disk and install like normal

No residual linux information or grub install (as long as you delete all partitions while in cfdisk.

No need for bootable floppy disk (who really has these anymore?) or 3rd party software.

Peace Out

The BIOS will not be altered by installing Linux. The first thing is to check is whether the BIOS is set to boot from CD.

I can't tell from the other discussions if you have a Windows install disk. eg what do you mean by "Windows from another computer"?

Following up on the above, if you are using a "restore disk" off of another windows box, it will most likely not work. These restore disks from the manufacturer are configured to only work with the original hardware that they were installed on. If you are using an OEM copy of windows that shipped with the other box, it usually installs on other hardware but you will get a hassle when you try to acitvate. Restore disks are typically labelled as such whereas an OEM copy of windows will have the MS logo on it.

Why don't you start from scratch. Format your entire hard disk (after taking backups of all your important data) - then install Windows first - then install Linux.



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