I have WinXP and Linux on the same drive different partition. Can someone tell/show/point me in the direction of the easiest and most pain free way to do removal.

Thanks

You only have to format mandrake partition and remove grub, if you have grub installed.

You can use xp's own tools to remove mandrake. I guess xp has some formatting tools to use in this case. You can format the mandrake partition with ntfs or fat32, and make it ready to be used with xp.
Do you have grub or another linux bootloader installed? Removing these bootloaders can be more complicated, a bit. You can't just remove grub, you have to put another bootloader in place.

You have to boot the machine with xp install cd and choose the recovery console. Then, you have to log into the xp installation. You will be prompted to the admin password. Then, you run fixmbr, a small utility to write a new mbr to your computer. It will overwrite grub with xp boot sector. When you reboot there will be no more grub, xp will load direct from bios.

Beside partition magic, which default windows tools can recognise that partition and merge it with the rest of the HDD..

Thanks

To merge these partitions you should use partition magic, indeed. I don't know any other tool. But to format it, the utility doesn't have to recognise anything, just format using win native file systems.
In win xp console, try diskpart (I guess this is the name), the partition utility. You can also try fdisk. win2000 had a graphic tool to see and manage partitions, maybe it can format, too. Xp probably has this program too.

My problem lies in that XP cannot see the linux partitions to format will partition magic automatically format them for me when I join all the partitions on the main physical drive together?

XP cannot "mount" them, cause it lacks drivers to access the filesystem. What you have to do is check if xp knows that there other storage volumes in the computer. You can check it just by installing and running pmagic. If you open pmagic and point it to the correct hd, it should give you the correct reading of the partition table. If it doesn't, there a problem.

Once pmagic reads the hd correctly, what you have to do is a "batch operation". Choose the partition to be removed, remove it. With unpartitioned space in the disk, choose the partition to be resized, resize it. Pmagic will create a script to run in the next reboot. Then, you hit file>apply changes. Pmagic will reboot and do what you asked.

Its a good idea to defrag thw win partition before editing it.

XP cannot "mount" them, cause it lacks drivers to access the filesystem. What you have to do is check if xp knows that there are other storage volumes in the computer. You can check it just by installing and running pmagic. If you open pmagic and point it to the correct hd, it should give you the correct reading of the partition table. If it doesn't, there a problem.

Once pmagic reads the hd correctly, what you have to do is a "batch operation". Choose the partition to be removed, remove it. With unpartitioned space in the disk, choose the partition to be resized, resize it. Pmagic will create a script to run in the next reboot. Then, you hit file>apply changes. Pmagic will reboot and do what you asked.

Its a good idea to defrag the win partition before editing it.