I am using fedora 8. I am trying to install Windows back onto the hard drive and then install Linux back onto the dual boot. However I can't just put the windows disc in the drive and let it take care of partitioning and formatting as it will start up the disc and then it will say "Setup is detecting your hardware configuration", or something like that then it just hangs on a black screen and never proceeds, even after and hour and half of just sitting there. So I started looking around on the internet and found this site.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/247804

However I cannot figure out how to get into my FDISK utility. that tutorial says to insert the linux bootable floppy, which I don't have a floppy or a bootable disc, unless that means the setup disc which I do have. However If i need a "bootable disc" Where would i get one? and does anyone have a step by step of how to reinstall windows over linux and how to use the fdisk utility. Any help would be great.

you don't need to "uninstall" anything. If windows can't load, that would just be a problem outside of linux. if you really want you can put the fc8 cd in a boot to rescue mode, don't mount the partitions / scan the system and then run fdisk there to delete the partitions. But windows can nuke a drive on install anyway, so you really shouldn't need to.

What version of Windows are you trying to install? Did you read the "APPLIES TO" section near the bottom of that Microsoft page?

Did you read the part that says "If you are installing Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000, the Linux partitions can be removed and new partitions created and formatted with the appropriate file system type during the installation process."?

Since those are the only versions the whole article applies to, that statement makes the whole rest of the article pointless. You don't actually need to remove Linux before installing Windows. The point of that article by Microsoft was to confuse you, not to inform you.

If you go to other versions of that Microsoft page, it tells you the same thing for other versions of Windows, such as the one that says "When you install Windows XP, the Linux partitions can be removed and new partitions created and formatted with the appropriate file system type during the installation process."

I'm fairly sure the problem you're having installing Windows is not related to the previous install of Linux. I think it is caused by a BIOS setting, probably for the interface to the hard drive.

I used two different versions of windows. The first was Windows XP home and that did the detecting hardware then went to blank screen. then my friend has the corporate version of windows xp that he let me try just incase my disc was bad. Well that also did the exact same thing as my windows home edition. I read similar issues like this online saying that windows installer looks for a windows partition on the disc and since the linux one is on the disc the windows installer can't locate your hard drive. or something like that. I dunno. Anyone else. Im gonna try the repair mode thing suggested above and see if that works. Any ideas in the mean time are appreciated. Thanks.

I expect you won't have much trouble using your fedora 8 setup disk to delete the Linux partitions. But I also expect it won't make any difference.

Once that fails, you should carefully walk through all the menus of BIOS settings. Look for anything that relates to the mode of the hard drive interface. You may want to post the text of BIOS questions and the available answers to get someone to explain what those settings mean and whether the XP installer supports them.

Also, do you recall if any floppy came with the motherboard? The XP installer has a method (I forget the details) to let you pause in the middle of booting up the install CD to insert a floppy to load drivers for critical motherboard features that aren't supported by the XP installer. That is a very annoying feature of several of the old Dell systems used where I work. They need such a floppy to reinstall XP and were never shipped with it. Instead there is some Dell web site where you can type in the service tag number then navigate to a page where you can download an image of the floppy, then write it to floppy media on some healthy system before trying the XP install on the sick one. I don't know if your system vendor did anything that lame.

Of course, Linux installs with no problems and no special drivers on those same systems.

Everytime i try to run fdisk I get an error saying that the drive can not be opened.

Also I went through my bios and I didn't see anything out of the ordinary so I just did a restore of defaults. I've never had a problem installing windows on the Default Bios. That didn't help either. The only problem I can think of and I have no Idea if its really an issue is that I have my HDD which is an older IDE HDD and my DVD-rw drive hooked up to the same IDE cable. My HDD is master Drive and The DVD drive is the slave. I had no problems installing Linux with this setup but would this cause a problem with Windows. Also My computer is a home build and does not have a floppy disk drive. I kinda figured floppys were obsolete so i didnt spend the 6-10 dollars for one. I used to have Windows on this computer and the HDD itself was salvaged out of another computer and it had windows 98 or 2000 on it, i can't remember which. Either way I blew the old system away and installed linux. Had issues with linux and my graphics card and finally got that working. Now I wanna run it with a dual boot so that I can use this machine as a spare gaming computer. I know there is software that will probably allow me to install games on my linux system but I'd rather not fight with it. its been a big headache so far.