want to uninstall Linux and install XP professional--help

Probably your GNU/Linux installation has the harddrive partitioned in a way that you will not like for windows (and as i remember the Windows installer does not resize partitions but if it does this is moot anyway). If you do not happen to have a copy of partition magic laying around, there is a great GNU/Linux tool that will do this for you. Let me know if you need it.

Bulldogzerofive....whatever help you could give I would appreciate. Could I run a wipe out CD on the box first? Would that help? Any idea where I could download this?

I looked it up the windowsXP Pro install disk will repartition your hard drive... you will not need any extra tools.

You do not want to change the BIOS from floppy to CDROM; the floppy has no impact on this. You want to boot from CDROM before your internal harddrive, which is probably called something like HDD in your BIOS.

Once you have done this, GNU/Linux will not boot at all once after you put a bootable CDROM in the drive and reboot. Instead, it will load windows into RAM from the CDROM, and then you will see the installer and it should all be gucci from there.

You will get a table of the partitions on your computer; right now you probably have three or so. Delete all of them and then create one large C: and format it NTFS. Then, let the install go.

This page is probably helpful:

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winxppro/installxpcdoldhdd/indexfullpage.htm

The tool i was going to send you to is called Knoppix. It is a LiveCD version of debian linux, meaning that you boot your computer from the CD without touching your harddrive at all. This is usefull because there are things that you can't do to a drive while it is being used (like resize partitions or make complete backups). With knoppix you get a complete desktop environment, an office suite, and most importantly a bunch of administrative tools. The nicest of these (i find) are the partitioning utility (QTParted) and the backup utility (partimage). If you buy commercial versions of these two utilities alone, it will cost you well over $150, but knoppix is free for download. Of course, if you like it and use it you should send a few bucks back to knoppix to thank them, in my humble opinion.

If you are interested, go to www.knoppix.org. The CD image and everything you need to know to use it is there.

Good Luck!

Thanks for the help...I realized I had an extra HD in another pc and just took out the linux HD. However, I installed XP pro and everything seems to be working fine except on the first boot up only, I receive the error message "disk boot failure, insert system desk and press enter" and the OS does not load. When I reboot after this error, XP comes up with no errors at all and we can use the pc fine. Is there something to change in the Bios to get rid of this?

Sorry... I have no idea how to fix that. Try experiment with the boot order in the BIOS... maybe the CD drive or the floppy drive needs to be initialized each time you turn the power on or something along those lines and if you put the hard drive first in the boot order the BIOS won't look at the other devices and give you that error.

Other than that i do not know.

I am only planning to keep this box as stand alone with XP; no desire to keep or run linux at this point. Thanks for the advice. I did change the boot order from floppy to CDROM, booted up and it did not work. Linux did notice the Windows media but I'm sure it is set not to execute it...that is what I figured.

DELPART on a DOS boot diskette can be made with the tools from http://www.bootdisk.com

Boot DOS, type DELPART and remove the partitions so the Linux won't be there or boot.

-> Another method is to go get KILLDISK from google.com which also cleans off the hard drive.

After either method, boot the XP CD, install that OS, then install all those lovely motherboard, video and what other drivers Microsoft doesn't provide.

Bob

Since you're not planning to keep Linux, just insert the Windows install media, follow the instructions, and when the installation asks, use the whole drive as NTFS(standard). From there, it should be a piece of cake.