Don't hate me for this but...
 

I have a company provided laptop, that is set up for dual boot Win XP Pro, and Mandrake 10.1. The company provides all sorts of apps and tools for XP, but I would prefer to use LINUX for some tasks. The problem is that I have to reboot every time I want to switch OS. My solution is VMware.
I want to install LINUX in a VMware virtual machine. To do this, I would like to uninstall Mandrake, install VMware, and install a LINUX distro in the VM.
The problem is with grub which is the boot loader on the system.
Originally this was an XP only system. I created a new partiton on the HD for LINUX and installed it for dual booting. Now Grub controls the boot process. If I remove, format, or some how destroy the LINUX partition, I am worried about a no boot situation. The only XP distro I have is the one that came with the laptop, and it only provides for a complete bare bones reload of the OS, no repair function is provided.
Is there a way for me to remove the Grub, return to a standard XP boot and not lose anything?

You need to reinstall the windows Master Boot Record (MBR), I dont have a windows XP here, but with older versions of windows I know for sure you could do that with:

fdisk /mbr

Jeroen

erase youre linux partition then boot up with the XP disc and go into the recovery console. Then type fixmbr. then reboot.