How to Uninstall Linux and Re-install Win XP?

Hi to all out there. I am a newbie to this forum. I am facing problems uninstalling Linux and re-installing Win XP. Hope someone can help me out.

I installed Radix Linux from www.radixsystems.com early this year on my P3 800 MHz PC after attending a Linux course. Basically, I only wanted to have some practice on the Linux system. Installation of Linux was not a problem - I replaced the Win XP OS completely with Linux. Since then, I think I had enough Linux practice.

So I tried to uninstall Linux and reinstall Win XP but was unsuccessful. Below is a step-by-step description of what I did and what happened:

1. Changed BIOS settings to boot-up first from CD-ROM drive

2. Put Win XP CD into CD-ROM drive

3. Restarted PC

4. Display shows "Press any key to boot up from CD drive"

5. Pressed a key

6. Display shows "Inspecting your file configuration" (or something to that effect)

7. Display goes black immediately after that. (CD-ROM light was off. However, PC's light was on but was not blinking. The PC/display remained in this state even though I waited for more than 1 hour.)

8. I finally gave up and did a forced shutdown of the PC by keeping the on/off button pressed for a few seconds.

I don't think my Win XP CD was defective. (I also tried a Win XP SP 2 CD but the result was the same.) I searched this forum and found that some other people have raised this problem some time ago but there seemed to be no conclusive solution.

What I need is a step-by-step guide on what I should do. Thanks in advance

Here's a step-by-step guide directly from Microsoft on how to do it:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=247804

Ozar, I really appreciate your assistance. Very prompt response and extremely useful URL. Will try it out tomorrow and report back.:cool: :-D

I am sorry to report that the Microsoft support URL could not solve my problem. (Maybe it was because my flavour of Linux was different since it was from Radix?) Firstly, the recommended fdisk command did not work. The error was something like "bash 'fdisk' not found". Secondly, I didn't have the recommended 'setup diskette' but only 4 setup CDs. Thirdly, when I inserted the setup CD, I couldn't find anything related to 'fdisk' but there were a host of other options, mostly related to installation of Linux but nothing on uninstallation of Linux.

To cut a long story short, I sent an e-mail to my Linux instructor and he responded with this solution:

"You can wipe away the partition table of the hard disk in linux by issuing the following command (in command line mode, after you've logged in as root):

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=521 count=1

( if you have 1 IDE hard disk , the primary master, hence /dev/hda )

After that, reboot your system, any installation system will think that you have a brand new hard disk."

I tried the above command and it did the trick beautifully (perhaps only for Radix flavour). Now I have Windows XP on my PC.

Thanks to all.

Sorry the MS link didn't work for you, koo_h_p, but glad to hear you are up and running again. I do hope you'll try Linux again at some point in the future. :)

Well I have another method :)

Steps:
1- boot your system from windows98 cd.
2- type the command fdisk /mbr
By typing fdisk /mbr the master boot record will be deleted, then simply boot/start your system from windows XP and install it. When the installation is completed right click on my computer and goto->manage->disk management-> here it will show you the partitions of your harddisk . Note that there will be two partitions that will be marked as system not known , something like this message. Both of these partitions are of linux and swap. right click on the first one and select delete. Do the same process for the other one. By applying this process to both, the partitions will automatically get merged. Then simply right click on it and goto create partition , select the file system, then next next next finish :)

Thanks Ashrafzia for the suggestion. But problem is that I don't have a Windows 98 CD to start with.

I learnt from doing a 'man dd' that it is a command used for converting and copying a file with possible conversions.

'if' is input file
'of' is output file
'bs' is block size in bytes
'count=1' copies only 1 input block

Should work for most Linux systems.

Gparted its a free linux live cd, partition or wipe the harddrive... then write the new os to the partition or full hard drive...


http://gparted.sourceforge.net/


there you go, and let me know if you have any problems


max

hi dude..

i too had a same problem what you had but something different i installed both xp and linux in same HDD and i used linux boot loader (greb) to boot xp or linux, when my linux crashes the boot loader failed and i am unable to boot even the xp, but my xp doesn't crash and it works fine, now i want to boot xp this is problem i faced. what i did was i connected my HDD as secondary and deleted the linux partition using partition magic tool and then connected my HDD as primary and i freshly installed xp in unallocated space which i got when i deleted linux partion.