Switch to XP from fedora

Last week I spent my all free time in installing Microsoft XP service pack 2. I thought it should be easy task and should not take more than three to four hours in whole installation (including all drivers and software I need for my work). But I was wrong. I spent hours in pressing F12, F2 and Fwhatevernumber to enter the boot menu and change setting to factory default so that the machine can boot from CD and I can install XP. This was the beginning of my long struggle.

After searching some forums and online tutorials, I became quite knowledgeable. I felt enlightened. I came to know "grub loader", how to add windows to grub loader. I added a couple of lines into the "grub.conf" file but no success yet. I will still get black screen after I pressing any key when the windows asks me press any key. "Windows is inspecting hardware configuration for installation". My question was so what? Let me please install XP over Fedora. I was ready to lose all data as I had already copied everything to external hard drive.

I also came to know that I should change the ext3 format to ntfs, repartition and make free space for XP. My system will not ready to listen to me. Fedora takes first 512 bits to start the loader so I was suggested to write 00000 manually so that there is no loader. I believe I did everything possible to reinstall XP over Fedora but I lost. I surrendered.

In the end, I downloaded ubuntu9.1 and install this over Fedora. Surprising Fedora let me installed Ubuntu. And the next step was to install XP over ubuntu. I got the fabulous blue screen. Hmm.. and I was ready to install XP.

To cut long story short. Get rid of Fedora first by installing ubuntu and than install XP. It works smoothly and takes less than half a day in whole setup.

Hope you enjoy your XP experience.