i have an old laptop that has nothing on it but windows xp. i want to do a total wipe-out of this machine and convert it to a total linux machine by installing linux ubuntu on it (and whatever else will run under linux). i've downloaded the .iso file to the local machine, i extracted using 7-zip file manager, i ran the install, it looks like it installed it to c:\ubuntu (still in winXP), but I'm not sure what to do next. I took a look around and haven't yet found anything specific to where I'm at in the process (i'm sure mine was not an exhaustive search:) -- any help is greatly appreciated.

Are you saying you downloaded using Wubi? http://wubi-installer.org/

thanks for asking -- actually, i found some more info, and figured it out. i burned those files that I unzipped from the .ISO file onto a CD -- had to be a Read-only cd; my laptop wouldn't read my read-write cd -- and it worked!