fdisk problems

Are you root? Try "/sbin/fdisk /dev/hda"

You can always use a bootdisk to delete the linux partitions. You could use the free program entitled "Boot-It NG". You can download iso or boot disk images.

If you do take the boot disk route, take a look at the ultimate boot cd -- http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It has a couple of bootable linux images that you could boot into and use their fdisk command.

But if you simply want to put windows back on your laptop ( and only windows ) windows has paritioning configuration in its setup ( when you first boot from the cd and its all retro and blue )

You should be able to select each partition and delete them ( i think its the L key or something dumb like that but it says which key you need on the install page ) and then create a new partition with the default options and install windows to it.

Mind you i'm talking from experiance from installing windows xp pro, it may be different for home, but i can't see why

When i put in my xp pro cd this is what i get

Press any key to boot from CD...

i hit <enter>

System is checking Hardware configuration

and then just a black screen and nothing happens it crashes

Am i goin to have to partition it in ,linux then install xp on the partition and the remove linux ??

Cheers
Richard

To be honest, I wouldn't expect the state of your harddrives to crash the XP setup cd. Being a laptop, it must have a vendor recovery CD, are you using that or a generic windows XP cd? You may have some different hardward that the normal XP cd does not support which means you'll HAVE to use the recovery cds, but those CDs should take care of the partitions anyway (depending on how they were made)

But failing that you could just use the fdisk on one of the linux distributions that are on UBCD ( link in my first post )