Well, sounds like you haveing 'fun now '... Believe it or not, this type of mess is not all that of uncommon. Anyway, let me see if I can make some useful suggestions.
First, on your choice of distros. Mandrake 10.0 is old. The current version is Mandriva 2006, there have been several realeases between 10.0 and 2006. BTW 2007 is being developed. Fedora 1 is also old, FC 5 is current.
Where did the CD's you tried to come from ??? How were they burned? Do you know if the MD5SUMs were correct? Just my guess, ( this happens all too often with first tries ) someone handed you the CD's ( condidtion unknown ). Second common situation, you have no idea what I meant by md5sums. Either way this is a recipt for disaster.
O.K. so question is how do you get something 1. up to date 2. CD images that are good. As far as up to date, have a look at download linux on this board. The popular ones are there, and the links to the releases are up to date, and stable releases, not necessarily the very latest bleeding edge stuff. As a noob stay away from that. Here is the link to download section.
http://iso.linuxquestions.org/
As far as which distro to try after you recover the wifes machine, either suggestion Mandriva 2006 or FC 5 is good for a noob. I've been uning Mandriva and Mandrake releases for about four years. They work well once installed and the installer is as easy as any linux installer out there today. I have also used Ubuntu another often recommended distro. There are some things about it I am not as fond of, but still a good first choice.
Now, the md5sum. This is a way of checking the integratiy of the downloaded and burned CD image. Each CD is about 650 Mb. Errors are common on download. When the image is made at source, a program calculates the md5sum. Before you burn, you run a program against the image file and check the sums match. Any mismatch indicates the image is bad. When they are good, the image file is good. Second thing that can go wrong is the burning process. People with little experience tent to want to burn at too high of speed while htier system is busy doing other things. Results = bad burns, and screwed up installations. Antother possibility, they use real cheapo CD's, not good enough for their high spped burners. You can see there are lots of ways to screw up here. So, rule of thumb; burn the image slow, well under max speed of the burner, buy a few name brand CD's with good ratings for speed, and don't have the system doing anything else while burning. I go make coffee...
Instructions on the How To Burn -
http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/LQ_ISO
You will see there are instructions for doing this in windbloze Mac and linux.
Your last issue, how to reinstall XP. Well, the first thing I would try is boot to the recovery console, and try and restore the MBR ( master boot record ). Probably the XP that was installed is still O.K. When you install a second OS, Mandrake and FC both will install ( user choice here ) a boot loader; Lilo or Grub on the MBR. It also gets updated so you get a menu and can choose Windoze. Since you linux install isn't working, you can not easily change the boot loader. If you boot the XP install CD, you can get a recovery console. Then you can run a command 'fixmbr' That will write a new boot reconrd to the master boot record. If the XP system is O.K. just re-boot the system, and voila, it'll work.
If that fails, because the windbloze system has been corrupted, I would suggest you use more drastic measures. I would delete all partitions, re-create the partitions, format them and then re-install. There are lots of commands, and I don't know how much you know. So, post back if you need more help with that.
Last suggestion, don't give up on linux; at least not yet. Linux is not for everybody. It is secure, virus attacks and spy ware are not a problem. There is software for just about anything you can imagine; and for the most part it is free. Suggestion, try a a Live disrto first. A live CD runs from your CD of DVD drive, and install nothing on your hard drive. Several have lots of common software. They work well, and allow you to learn a little BEFORE you much up the wifes machine. Try Knoppix or PClinuxOS. There are other good choices.
I put my first install on a used machine I bought for very little. That way i could mess it up, learn a little and not get other people all upset, cose their windbloxe is all messed up...
Hope this helps.
Installation of Mandrake goes wrong and files end up being corrupted, and I can not get past host login! Not to mention it took me about an hour to learn "startkde". "startkde" will not work, and during the installation I chose KDE for my GUI ( My friend used it). Now from what I understood 10.0 was supposed to go straight to KDE (stupid n00b thinking again).
PFFFTTT yeah right. Now on the second installation my interface eth0 fails and I still can not get past host login. So! I give up and contact a friend of my wife who loves this Linux stuff... he calls me a dumbass and tells me Fedora is what I should have been messing with.... SO... I get a copy of Fedora Core 1 from a mirror and try to install and nothing works!!!! GAH!! I go out and buy a book with Fedora Core 2 for my 120G, if I ever figure this stuff out... Now!!! I am trying to reinstalled Windows XP and it allways fails to boot up.. I have gone into boot window and tried to boot from CD-drive and it keeps failing... I have gone into BIOS and tried to change the boot order.. still no worky....
