[BryanMc97]

I have a friend's computer. He received it from another friend who had the Xandros OS installed on it. He has no idea how to use that OS. Ultimately, he would like to install WinXP on it. I found out that I can't just install Windows because of the different partitioning of the hard drive (Windows needs NTFS or FAT32). I am looking to just format the hard drive from Xandros (or another manner) so that I can install Windows on a fresh PC. I tried putting in the Windows install CD already and restarting the computer, but it doesn't recognize it and just loads up Xandros. Thanks.

[Elvandil]

If you format the drive from Xandros, you will be creating a new Ext2fs file system and be right back where you are now. You don't want to format--you want to erase the drive and remove its contents.

The XP CD should be recognized and boot up regardless of what is on the hard drive.

Is the CD set to boot before the hd in BIOS setup?

Once you get setup started, you should be able to repartition and reformat both of which are part of XP setup.

But, if you do have any problems, you can use nearly any free partitioning app to remove the Ext2fs or swap partitions from the drive.

CloneZilla GParted LiveCD (Complete partitioning and drive imaging/restoration tools)
Gparted LiveCD
Parted Magic
Vista Recovery Disk (Shrink, expand, create, delete partitions)
XP Recovery Console CD image (Create and delete partitions with diskpart.exe)
Partition Logic
Ranish Partition Manager
Cute Partition Manager

[saikee]

The XP installation CD can be used to remove any Linux partition and installs XP in its place.

[BryanMc97]

Thanks for the responses. I was able to remove Linux and install Windows XP.