uninstall fedora

[friends_4ever32]

well..i m new to linux,
wanted to dual boot xp n fedora 7 but as a new bie,i installed fedora 7 over whole hard disk,now i have lost all window partition,all data everything,i loved fedora 7,its fast n good,but my institution wants me to dual boot with xp n i wanna work on both,
problem is that i cant uninstall fedora7....i tried...
deleting the patition from fedora dvd ,
using xp installation cd,while doing soo...what happens is the cd tries to boot but then i click a key to boot from cd,a dialogue comes that....checking hardware for the installation....and a dim black screen comes up n tthis is what just happens.....in short i m nt able to boot from xp cd too,read a lot on site n every where ultimately found out that something called MBR must be deleted n GRUD should also be deleted.....now how to do that i dont know...
KINDLY GUIDE ME THRW WHOLE PROSEDURE TO REMOVE FEDORA N THEN INSTALL XP N FEDORA BOTH
i wd b really thankful.......

[reed9]

XP has difficulty reading linux filesystems. If you format the drive to FAT32 or NTFS first, then your XP install disk should work fine.

I use a live linux distro called parted magic for most partitioning tasks, but any live cd with gparted would work as well.
GParted partitioning software - Full tutorial

Fedora 7 is very old and no longer supported. I don't recommend reinstalling it. You should go with a current distro.

You do not need to remove GRUB from the master boot record. Windows will overwrite the MBR with it's own boot manager. (One of the reasons it's much easier to install windows first and linux second when dual booting.)

[friends_4ever32]

well u said is rite n i know coz i had xperinced that windows cd cant do that all alone,
well what i have to do then sir,
gparted is something related to partioning ok,
i wanna make my hard disk perfectly blank now n install xp n then fedora 11 might be or 12...
but how to remove this fedora 7 to make my hdd as new again

[reed9]

You need to download parted magic or other live linux distro. Burn it to a cd and boot it up. Partition and format your harddrive to FAT32 using gparted. I would make 2 partitions at this point, one for windows and one for linux. Then install windows.

InformIT: Burn It and Boot It: "Live CD" Linux > What Is "Live CD" Linux?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto
The definitive dual-booting guide: Windows 7, Linux, Vista and XP step-by-step

[yancek]

This is supposed to work, don't use xp myself but you need the full installation CD not a Recovery CD:

use xp cd, enter "R" (for recovery?) in setup, select xp from list, enter password, enter FIXMBR, if that doesn't work enter "FIXBOOT".

If that doesn't work, try this site which is pretty detailed:

Recovering Windows XP using the Recovery Console

[friends_4ever32]

dear reed9 and yancek,
thanks a tonnnn....i did it n m very happy.....the solution worked,
i had a 200gb HDD,now i made 4 ntfs patition 50gb,40,40,30,n i left around 40gb unpartioned,coz i wanna install fedora on that.....my xp n other ntfs partition r running fine .....but i again wanna install fedora but m scared that again the same thing dosent happen...i want the fedora dvd gets installed on that unpartioned 40 gb space,,,,,
so guide me so that i do not commit mistake again

and thanks a lot for that help

[grishi_111]

if you have unpartitioned space, you will get the advantage.
boot from fedora DVD(assuming)
select Install new system
select language and keyboard type
then installer finds hard drives connected, when it displays hard drive and ask for partition to use for installation choose (this is the step that you didn't took care of before and wiped entire disk, So be alert this time.)
Use free space and create default layout
thats it.
i suggest you, if you do not get this option, just exit installer and post here about your problem.

[yancek]

I'd concur with grishi_111, take special care as to which partition. You should probably run the fdisk -l command as root from the Fedora install CD so you know exactly what your partition setup is.

The second thing is the bootloader. You can use xp bootloader to boot both but it is much easier to use Fedora Grub. At the end of your installation, you will get an option as to where to install Grub, master boot record or the /boot or /root partitions so watch for that.