Hello all-
Here’s the problem. A few weeks back I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my old DELL desktop using universal usb easy installer.
When I installed Ubuntu I wiped the hard drive completely so that Ubuntu is the only thing installed.
I love this OS but today I had the desire to play some early 90’s PC games GTA, Doom, Duke Nukem etc.
So in order to play these I need to install windows back on my desktop, by the way Im using “windows Xp” for my install. When I try to install “XP” windows will not install because windows does not recognize the hard drive because Ubuntu is the only thing on the drive. My question is how do I solve this? How do I Uninstall Ubuntu completely from the hard drive so windows can recognize the drive and install? Any suggestions/help will be greatly appreciated ..thanks

-Grant

you can't "uninstall" unbuntu. You need to just delete the partitions that XP can't handle, so under ubuntu, run "sudo fdisk /dev/sda" (given you are using /dev/sda) and just delete all the partitions. When you reboot, XP will see a blank hard drive.

hey chris-

I just did that..fdisk...."m" "d" "1" "w" and rebooted my system..I was prompted with " this partition is missing..."boot rescue" something along those lines.
Now I can just load the XP media and windows should be able to find my systems hard drive?!?! or is there something else I still need to do?

no, that should be it. Older windows installers only recognize windows partitions, as it's rubbish. So with no partitions, it should see a big blank disk. and the grub install on the MBR will just be blown away without XP bothering to ask you. From this point, there is no Linux perspective on any other issues you hopefully won't have!

Ok...so next thing is:
I loaded the XP media got to the blue screen that reads "Microsoft XP Pro Set Up page"...."To set up windows XP now Press Enter" so I press enter...nothing happens

Ive now tried numerous time with no response from the system,,Ive tried multiple keyboards with no response...I even tried R for repair and F3 to
quite again nothing happens Any idea whats going on? Think I need a pint mate

Any IDEAS PLEASE?!?!

As this is no longer a Linux-specific question, you may get better answers by posting this question in the "General" section.

Have you tried the CD in another machine just to see if you can get past that point? You might actually be better off as suggested above, re-posting in the General section here as it is a windows problem or go to support.microsoft and do a search there or at some other windows sites.