I recently installed fedora and im very new to linux and now i need to put WinXP on this computer. When i try to put in the disk it boots then i get a black screen right after it tries to inspect my hardware. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

One sure thing i can tell you is that it's not fedora's fault, did you install from this xp cd before?

yes i have many times
ideally i would just like to format and start fresh

This is extremely odd, cause as far as i know booting from cd has nothing to do with previous installations on hd, maybe try other cd anyway...

yeah my only other bootable CD is an old windows 98 cd but i can always go from there if it works

I've seen non-standard MBRs cause the Windows CD to hang at that point.

if you want to wipe out what's on the hard drive and start over you can zero out the master boot record with this command in Linux as root:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

Of course this assumes that the hard drive in question is actually /dev/hda

thanks alot ill try that

this could be very stupid of me but i tried that command in the terminal and nothing happened...do i have to do it in rescue mode or something???

Hey, I recently had the same problem. I installed Fedora 4 on my laptop and used it for 6 months. And when I needed a Windows computer I used the one my company gave me.

Well, the company laptop died, and I was forced to make a dual boot. I went about it by installing Windows first. And sure enough, I put the XP Pro CD in that my company gave me...nothing. I tried it again...nothing.

First, insert the original Recovery Discs that came with your computer. It will erase all the data on the HD and install the original Windows that came with your computer.

Then you can use the Windows CD that you want.

Cool?