Is XP still accessable ?
 
I only know of 2 ways to remove a linux OS from the drive. Either use a win 98 cd or boot floppy and enter fdisk at the dos prompt, and delete the partition that Ubuntu is on, or use a 3rd party partitioning tool, such as Nortons Partition Magic, and do the same (delete the partition that Ubuntu is on). Of course, if XP is still accessable you want to be sure to not delete the ntfs partition. I believe this will accomplish what you want to do. If your son let Ubuntu install using the entire hard drive, you realize, that Ubuntu formated and wrote to the entire drive, and xp is probably gone.
Good Luck
Justbill

I don't think that the dos or Win 98 version of fdisk will see the Linux partition.
 
The key is, what you have now. If a Linux bootloader is installed and dual booting XP and Linux, don't delete the linux partition, or you will lose the ability to boot XP. If you do, than the grub reference on the linux partition will be gone and booting XP not possible.
 
You noted that XP was pre-installed. Does this mean that you do not have a full copy of XP which will allow you to restore the Windows bootloader from the cdrom disk?
 
Some have reported that they have been able to recover the XP bootloader with a Win 98 boot disk, others have failed. This depends on a number of factors.
 
If you don't need the disk space and you can still boot into Windows, I would leave well enough alone.
 
If as JustBill noted, Windows was "taken over" by Linux (if your son allowed a full takeover of the hard drive), then you have no XP anymore.
 
In any case, you need to do two things;
 
1. Restore the Windows bootloader or uninstall the current linux bootloader (grub or lilo, whichever you are using).
 
2. Reclaim the disk space, if you need to, with a partitioning manager.
 
Let us know what your situation is and we can advise further.

Hmmm, I have, in the past used fdisk, off of a win 98 floppy to remove any partitions, including a linux partition. That was on an older machine, and running FC3 by itself (no windows).
Another possoibility would be using a media wiper. I have also used "Wipe Drive" in the past, THIS WILL REMOVE EVERYTHING from your hard drive! You will have to have an operating system to reinstall (the win xp cd).
 
Justbill

Thanks much for your responses. To answer your questions:
 
(1) XP is still available.
(2) When one boots, you choose between linux and XP--I assume that is what you mean by dual loading?
(3) Since XP was preloaded, I do not have an original XP disc--only the recovery discs supplied by Acer which, of course, is not the same.
 
In doing some research on this site and others, it appears that other people have had success by first using an XP set-up disc, entering recovery, running fixmrb, and then erasing the linux partitions.
 
Since I have some XP setup discs from other computers at our house we tried this but couldn't get past when it asks for the administrator password. We entered the admin password that gets us into XP when it loads but for some reason it didn't recognize it. I tried changing the password (no luck) and deleting a password entirely (still no luck). So we could never get to the point where we could run fixmrb.
 
Suggestions?

Try this. Go to this page and follow the instructions to enable automatic admin rights for the recovery console.
 
Then go to this Microsoft article to see how to recover the MBR.

Thanks very much. Your Microsoft search skills are superior to mine! Will try this in the next few days and get back to you.
 
G