Q I purchased Fedora on DVD from a publication and installed it on my Acer notebook, thinking I would always have access to my programs already installed on my Windows desktop. That was a wrong assumption on my part. As you can tell I'm new to this Linux OS. I realise there is the Wine software that allows one to incorporate Windows with Linux. Unfortunately, when I partitioned my hard drive, I lost my wireless connection to the internet and I can't seem to reconnect. Also, I have important software that I have to use on my Windows XP Pro but can no longer access. My question to you is: how do I undo the partition, thus removing Fedora until I'm ready to reinstall it? I've tried to upload Partition Magic 8.0 software that I have but it won't work since it's an .exe file. I should also mention that my notebook came pre-installed with Windows XP and therefore I don't have the Windows XP CD. I've gone to different websites from my PC but to no avail since they all mention having the XP CD.
A There are two possibilities here. The first is that you deleted your Windows partition when installing Fedora by choosing the option to Remove All Partitions On Selected Drives. If this is the case, you have lost Windows and will have to reinstall. You should be able to obtain an installation CD from your laptop's supplier or manufacturer. The second, and hopefully correct, possibility, is that you still have Windows installed but have lost the option to boot it. Most distros' installers have the option to set up a dual-boot with Linux, where you get to choose your operating system each time you boot up. When you see the message 'booting Fedora... in n seconds' shortly after booting, press a key and you will see a menu.
If Windows is on this menu, select it and you'll have Windows working again. To remove the Fedora bootloader and have your system boot straight into Windows needs a Windows rescue disc. As it does not need a full XP installation CD, you can usually fix things with one of the boot discs available from www.bootdisk.com. It will be easier if you have access to a working Windows computer to download a disc image from here and write it to a floppy drive. Boot into the rescue system and run fixmbr to restore the Windows bootloader and remove the Grub menu. Fedora will still be there, but you can now run Partition Magic to reclaim the space it uses.