Is there any one out there who has upgraded from Red Hat 8 to Windows XP Pro on a single boot system. I know that Windows is a really dirty word in this forum.

Just install Windows XP, what's there to upgrade? They're two totally different OS's. Just backup personal files and reinstall the new OS, that simple.

This kind of reminds me of that whole "The specs said Windows XP or better so I installed Linux" joke. But seriously, you should give some clarification as to what you're trying to do.

It's easy to wipe out Linux and install Windows XP. Microsoft has made it easy to just
wipe out Linux. I am sure you are worrying about the fact, your hard disk(s) are formatted
with a non-ntfs file system such as ext3...no problem, the XP installation program will
wipe out and reformat the hard disk as NTFS. For those who are wanting to migrate to Linux
and they have NTFS, no problem...Linux (I refer to Fedora Installer, among others) will
allow for wiping out NTFS and installing a new file system...so either way, you are fine.

You have to have a FULL VERSION of Windows XP, NOT the upgrade version. The upgrade version
ONLY works if you have some prior Microsoft OS on the hard disk. Either a retail version of
XP Full Version or an OEM copy will work. BTW, this will not be the case with the new VISTA
platform, Microsoft has placed some restrictions on the OEM version...

Now, assuming that you have the full version, either retail or OEM, set your BIOS to boot
from your CD ROM as the first boot device, insert the XP CD into your CD/DVD Rom drive and
reboot. XP installer will launch and once you have gotten through the license agreement
section, you will be given the opportunity to do a fresh install of XP and it will look at
your hard disks and give you the option to delete the partitions and reformat. So you
want to first delete any partitions, the most important being, the Primary of the Master
Drive (if you have more than one HD), because Windows has to boot from the Primary partition
or "C" Drive. WARNING: All your Linux stuff will be wiped out, the MBR will be re-written
and you will loose LILO or GRUB, since XP will set the MBR to boot XP. You can consult the
Microsoft Knowledge Base to learn how to set up a dual boot system if you wish to reinstall
Linux. Later on, once you have XP up and running, you can buy a copy of Symantec's Partition
Magic, and create new Linux Ext3 or reiser FS paritions if you want to dual boot into a Linux
Distro. The nice thing is, that most of the Linux installers I have tried, automatically
recognize pre-formatted Ext3 partitions. If you do this, make sure you create two small paritions
for /boot and for swap and one large partition for Ext3 using Partition Magic. I also
advise you to run scan disk (at the DOS terminal, type the command: chkdsk /f/v), reboot and
let chkdsk check for lost sectors and clusters and do a repair, if needed, and then defrag
the hard disk(s) before you create any linux partitions using partition magic.

I hope this helps. This is how I have my computer set up...

JimmyCFiverTwo