I installed fedora core 3 on one of my boxes and have now decided to windows only on that machine. Therefore, I thought I would boot from a win xp cd and reformat/install windows. To my surprise when the windows installer checks for hardware configuration the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I've surfed many forums and find where people are having the same problem, but I can't find any instructions on how to fix the problem. If anyone can help I would be very appreciative.

First of all, it' not a good way to install WinXP after any *NIX cause the NTLoader is a stupid loader and you will need to rescue lolo/grub. i think there are some real problems with your hardware cinfigurations

looks like its time to pull out a large magenet...hopefully that will purge my harddrive so I can reformat using windows disc. /shrug

If the Windows install hangs it's not likely due to any Linux you have installed on your hard drive. Windows usually safely ignores your linux partitions and depending on the moon phase and how many goats you've sacrificed it will either ignore your boot loader in the MBR or blissfully overwrite it. As MX_Unforgiven said, the big problem with installing Windows on a system with Linux is getting back the ability to boot into Linux afterwords.

If your Windows installer locks up consistently, it will probably still do so after you blame Linux and format the whole hard drive. I would start looking at other sources for problems, possibly hardware or RAM or something more esoteric (I had a video card that would lock the XP install but worked great if you installed with a different one and swapped it back after install was done.)

if you want to load linux after Win install just do the following:
1) boot up from something bootable
2) type boot: vmlinuz -S root=/dev/hdax where x--is number of your first Linux partition. Usually if you have one partition for Win (drive C, first Linux partition is /dev/hda5

Hardware isn't the issue... I had windows xp successfully installed and decided I would set up a dual boot with fedora core, which is what I run stand-alone on my 2nd box. I made the mistake in the installation process of deleting and overwriting my windows partition that had xp on it. Thus, I tried to boot from a windows cd and just reformat and install windows again...and no dice. The windows installer says inspecting your hardware, then the screen goes blank and nothing happens. There is no hardware issue other than linux has installed something on the boot blocks of the drive that windows uses and now it will not recognize the drive even for a reformat. I can't use the fdisk utility because the drive is serial ATA. If anyone knows of software or a boot disk that I can use to purge my harddrive I would be much appreciative for the info.

Again, hardware config is not the issue... windows xp had been running fine for months before the problem. This only occured after fedora core 3 was installed... and I'm the dumb one for not realizing that a linux install could possibly corrupt any attempt at installing windows on the same drive in the future.

Hardware Config:
Abit av8 3rd eye
amd fx5300 64bit
evga nvidia 6800 ultra
2 gig pc3200 kingston hyper x low latency
seagate 160gig SATA harddrive

I have exactly the same problem!

i installed fedora core 3, then decided i wanted to install windows xp also ( i created another partition on same drive)

but when it gets to the "inspecting your hardware configuration" bit i get a blank screen and nothing happens....

i hope someone can work this one out or it looks like im going to have to get rid of fc3 :<

Can't have that. What type of partition did you create, and was it a primary partition ???
Try making it a fat32 primary and see how you go.

Then we'll deal with the bootloader question ...

I had created 3 partitions

1st 100mb boot partion (primary)
then a 1024mb swap partition
then a 10gig or so partition for /

in the end i gave up and formatted the drive, had to fix the mbr first with fdisk /mbr because it was messed up bad somehow, i installed windows xp first then went and installed fedora core 3 and it worked fine...

just hope you dont have to reinstall windows xp again!

it seems fedora core now does not mess up the mbr like it used to, but windows sure does so watch that

I have the same problem. Totally wiped Windows XP, then installed Fedora 3 on a new, single partition. I wanted to get rid of Fedora 3 and go back to Windows XP, but when I put in the CD and attempt to load the Windows XP install, it goes blank.

How the hell do I get rid of Fedora 3 completely? This is insane. Did I just lose a HD?

Something to do with it? "The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 2432... this is larger than 2024 and could in certain setups cause problems with: ... 2. booting and partitioning software from other OSs"

Also, I left the blank screen on for a while after I booted from the Windows install CD. When I hit the power on the computer, the computer went through the Fedora 3 shutdown seq. Gaze. So Fedora loaded and was probably at the login but blank.

Talk about a bug. More like a concious Fedora virus.

Ok, how to fix this problem!

Go into fdisk in the command line. Delete the primary partition. Create a new partition and set it to 1024. Write the tables, get the errors and exit. Reboot and load Windows and pray to Bill Gates the Allmighty!

I had the exact same problem. I had XP installed fine, then did a clean install of Fedora Core 3, and then decided to install XP back on that box. Immediatley after the Setup is inspectin hardware... screen it went blank and I could hear the hard drive cranking away. I tried fdisk, fdisk /MBR...no good. I had to LOW LEVEL FORMAT in order to get XP to install... I don't know who's at fault, but something is seriously wrong...

I had the same problem and isn't a hardware problem, now i can't re-install windows XP... Fedora core 3 has caused it.

Hi Guys,

I have the same problem too - except I am trying to install XP over Mitel SME Server v6. If I choose to bot from the XP CD is goes to a black screen as soon as it starts "inspecting hardware configuration". If I chose to boot from the HDD into SME Server it works fine.