I just bought a laptop for my wife and since she likes things simple, I decided to remove Visa in favour of Linux Ubuntu. But I've had so many problems finding drivers etc for the laptop (an HP G7000) I would now like to install Windows 2000 which she is used to using but it won't work neither will my XP disk. And i seemingly can't go back to Vista. The restore programs are not on disk but in F11 when the machine is first booted. What can i do now? Help please.

I'm pretty sure that Windows 2000/XP doesn't have support for a lot of the newer hardware so that doesn't surprise me. I would recommend contacting the vendor where you purchase the laptop and ask them the steps for doing a recovery. Usually dell, hp, etc. has utilities online or on a separate partition where you can restore the system. This should be covered for the first month or so

WOW ,cant believe you did it first ,then looked for drivers ,or if there was drivers for xp/2000 , most new laptops don't ,as suggested above you were suppose to created restore dvd's when you first booted comp, or at least before you formatted it .contact HP for recovery DVD's

You have possibly lost everything. You only possibly solution is to remove the hdd use a special connection and connect it to your Computer as an external drive. You can possibly access the drive from your computer.

Otherwise, consult a computer store technician. Not a chain store but the little bloke who has a little shop down the little road.

I don't understand. I do have Ubuntu working and with a little help from their forums, I might have quite a successful system working within time. But is there no way back to another OS with a clean install? What about those Dell netbooks that are sold with Ubuntu installed. They cannot be coverted to Windows at any time?

I think you have learned a valuable lesson that no one ever follows -

"Please read the instructions before assembling the cot."

Time to fdisk then format then reload.
Ubuntu (all linux) software creates a hidden partition. You will have problems deleting it. I suggest you use partition magic after you load windows.

I stll think your best option is to do as I suggest before. It will only work if you have ubuntu on your PC as I doubt windows will be able to identify the ubuntu drive.

Computer experts do not exist, only novices in training.

Hi,
So, even if I have recovery CD's they won't recognise the hard drive. Is that right? Can you enlarge further on what you said: Time to fdisk then format then reload. You will need to explain in more basic language and procedure. Is there in what you say hope of reinstalling a Windows OS when you say reload?

This I do not follow. My sister has an HP, she made the recovery discs; I see that the recovery partition exists still on her machine, and is still accessible by F11. Why cannot you access it still, unless you managed to delete the recovery partition and overwrite it?
Admittedly I have almost no practice with HP lapppies, but I do not know why they say to make the recovery disks as a first step on initial startup. I also don't know why they fill 4 [FOUR!!] dvds....

Yup, I managed to delete the recovery partition. Idiot. My question now is, if I can obtain recovery discs from HP, can I still overwrite Ubuntu and get Vista back.

Ah. Right. You did that deliberately..? But has it been overwritten? If not, it is still there, and the partition can be rebuilt.
On another point, XP should certainly be installable on that machine. what happens when you try?
To amplify, on the main disk on my machine I have moved partitions , deleted some during initial setting up of it. Because it is a disk with plenty of free space still, some of those old partition [boundaries] and their files exist still, and with software I can recover them and the files if I so wish. I don't, but I can see the files, and they are good.