Newbie question

Exactly.  The CD/DVD drive must be before the hard drive in the boot sequence.

You can either delete the fedora partition and grow the xp partition to take the disk space, either just format it in some file system that xp is able to use and use it as a data partition (it will appear in xp with a new letter).
The second method is much easier and faster. The first one offers a single disk space.

It is very probable that there are 2 partitions for fedora: one for the system it self and another one for swap (1-2 GiB). This is usual in Linux systems, although it is possible to have a setup with no swap partition or with a swap file. In this case, you have to delete both. If there is any extended partition that contains them, you have to delete it, too.

To resize the xp partition (usually ntfs) be careful to select the option Nothing or No align in the Align box. Furthermore, don't touch the start of the partition. Just, drag the end of the partition to the right, to the end of the drive space. Trying to resize with an align option other than the actual one will break the boot process (it is possible to repair it with the xp install cd, however it is better to avoid the problem).

The DOS3.3 fdisk was quite simple. It asked just for the % of the drive to give to each partitions. The unix fdisk was quite more complex. GParted offers graphical use for the various tools, although in some special cases we need to go back to the command line.

Don't try to stop a running operation. A broken resize can be harmful foe the data integrity.

It is safer and recommended to keep backup of any important file of the hard drive. In most of the cases there is no problem, however there is always chance that something happens: hardware failure, power break, bad setors, defective connections or cables... as well as file system problems, software bugs.

In case of dubt, you can post here a screenshot of GParted and the output of the command
sudo fdisk -l -u
(l is the lowercase L) from the terminal window, for additional advice.
The GParted log stays in RAM and goes away after shut down. So, to keep the content you have to press the Save details button at the end of the operations to save it in html format and then copy it from the RAM to an external medium (USB stick, floppy disk... ).
Look for "Saving GParted details" in the GParted live manual.

It seems that /dev/sda1 is the xp system partition.

The 2 logical partitions /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda6 are the Linux partitions, you want to delete.  /dev/sda2 is the extended partition that contains them.

/dev/sda3 and /dev/sda4 are primary partitions that are probably recovery and testing tools. This is usual for computers with pre-installed mswindows operating system. I think you have to keep them, unless you are absolutely sure that you don't need their content.

I am not sure if you can easily delete /dev/sda2, because this could alter the partition sequence and the eventual recovery and testing operations. If these operations were already broken by the creation of the extended partition, then you could delete it.
If no, you can shrink it to a minimum, say 2 cylinders, that will be very small lost disk space.

The final unallocated of 2.49 MiB is just a small fraction of cylinder, you can neglect it.

Another scenario would be to leave one logical partition only, format it as fat32 or ntfs and use it as a data partition for xp.  You could even resize them.
Just, keep in mind to use the cylinder alignment if the first partition starts on sector 63.

Another remark: although it is possible to schedule many operations, it is better and safer to go step by step, reboot into xp and check each step. It is somehow longer but you have better control this manner.

If you delete /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda6, you 'll have an empty /dev/sda2. Their space belongs to /dev/sda2.
So, you need either delete /dev/sda2 (the light blue frame), or shrink its start to the right, to minimize it.

After that, you will be able to drag the right border end of /dev/sda1 to the right, to take the empty space. The total will be almost 72+72=144 GiB.
For this resizing operation, it is safer to select align to Nothing. And remember, don't touch the start of the partition.

I don't see any change. Did you apply the operations?

Here is what I get when I boot:

I was ready to use those commands and booted from the CD that came with the netbook. It went into a recovery mode and ended up installing Windows from scratch. No opportunity to use those commands. All his data is gone    I really wasn't expecting this. I guess he lost all the baby pictures.

There was nothing critically important and irreplaceable in the laptop. Most of the baby pictures were spread around among the family and still exist. I suppose if I'd used an XP disk from a different computer or downloaded one, it would have worked as you outlined. The weird thing is that the new restored system has two 72 gig partitions, C: and D:.