right now I am running a WinXP and Fedora Core 1 dual boot on my laptop. I have GRUB as my boot loader and here is what I want to do. I need to get Linux off of this laptop (it is going to someone else who would rather have the extra space available for windows memory). I was thinking of using Partition Magic to format the linux partitions and rejoin them with the windows partition. I'm hesistant to try this however, I've had bad experiences with overwriting boot records, etc etc with linux and I just want to know if the computer would still be able to boot into windows when I hit the power button (my main concern is that the computer may not be able find a boot loader and boot up an OS because GRUB is set as my default and it would be gone when linux gets formatted) does anyone have any experience with this type of matter?

Where is GRUB written? In MBR? If you just wipe out the linux partition (I assume it isn't hda1) you'll still get GRUB in that case. Just don't choose 'linux' when it prompts which OS to boot

boot off the winXP cd, (you have that right?) and enter recoverymode then "fixboot" and "fixmbr" and your cool. then use windows to reformat the partition(s).

Using Part Magic is like playing with fire... It's all fun and games until you burn down your boat shed. Have a search through these forums to see how many times people have destroyed their installs by using repartitioning software.

I believe that when I installed Linux I chose to not overwrite the MBR and use /boot.

Then how are you booting Linux? What menu comes up at boot?

when I boot up the usual BIOS screen shows up, GRUB loads, and I can choose WinXP or Fedora

Well it looks like grub was installed to the MBR, because it's loading... Use the fixmbr & fixboot commands like fatgod said. 'fixmbr' restores the XP MBR, 'fixboot' the bootsector.

yeah ive done that a couple times and I havent had a problem yet.