GRUB/Dual Boot Uninstall

Chet T16

At the minute i have Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11 dual booting on my netbook but i want to remove Ubuntu as i don't use it anymore.

How do i go about removing GRUB so it just boots into windows as it used to?

The netbook is an Acer One D255 which originally came dual booting android and windows 7 starter but i wiped and installed 7 pro

Thanks

yoyo

Chet T16 wrote: »

At the minute i have Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11 dual booting on my netbook but i want to remove Ubuntu as i don't use it anymore.

How do i go about removing GRUB so it just boots into windows as it used to?

The netbook is an Acer One D255 which originally came dual booting android and windows 7 starter but i wiped and installed 7 pro

Thanks

I did this only the other day! Quite easy to do. Delete the Ubuntu partition from in windows disk management (Right click computer in start menu>Manage>Disk Management). You now need to download the GParted Live disc, windows cant extend its volume as deleteing the partition in windows can't reformat it. In GParted you will see the EXT3/4 partition with unused space, I think you right click this and delete, this will give you unpartitioned space.
Now click the Windows volume, and extend it will all the unused space. So the drive looks like all one partition (Here you can partition it furhter if you desire, I prefare having only one partition.
Next you need to use your windows 7 DVD to make a bootable USB key. You probably know how to do this if you did it before. Click Repair this computer, choose command prompt and type the following into the console:

bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr

Reboot into Windows and thats it Its a bit of a PITA with netbooks you need to keep formatting a USB key, I used UNetBootIn which made this process quicker, make sure you format the USB drive to FAT32 or NTFS before running this program, it works with a Win 7 ISO too!

Nick

hearny

2 options here:
If you can, boot from the Windows 7 CD, and use the startup repair as seen in:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html

If you cant boot from windows recovery you can just change the grub options.

The file /boot/grub/grub.conf lists the boot options

Look for the lines

default=0
timeout=15

Timeout is the number of seconds the boot options are available,
default is the number partition number to boot by default.
Check how many entries there are and change the number to match where windows 7 is in the list, (0 is the first, 1 is second, there may also be lines like "Other Operating Systems" so these are included too.

e.g.

your grub list is:

Ubuntu
Ubuntu Single User Mode
Other Operating Systems
Windows 7

you would change the option to 3.
Save the file and reboot to make sure it works.

Before messing with partitions its a good idea to have a backup of anything important.

To delete the Ubuntu partition
Boot to windows 7, right click on Computer and click Manage.
Select Disk management and look at the partitions on the drive, the Ubuntu ones should show up as Unknown.
you can right click on them and delete them. (ONLY DO THIS IF YOU ARE SURE ITS THE RIGHT VOLUME, sorry for the caps just need to be sure).

When the partitions are deleted you can right click on the windows partition and click expand volume to reclaim the unused space.

If you are unsure about anything post a question here and I will let you know what to do.

Chet T16

Brilliant thanks!

7 pro came as a downloadable iso from college so i had installed it from a usb drive afaik

I'll try this out as soon as my battery isn't about to die!

yoyo

Chet T16 wrote: »

Brilliant thanks!

7 pro came as a downloadable iso from college so i had installed it from a usb drive afaik

I'll try this out as soon as my battery isn't about to die!

Make sure you have the 7 ISO before deleteing the partition, Grub will not boot anything unless you fixboot/mbr. Make sure follow the partitioning steps carefully also!

Nick

Doge

The most graphically user friendly software for managing dual boots,
is EasyBCD.

The sweet thing is that it edits the Windows bootloader,
so you dont have to go messing around with GRUB,
which is dangerous for people who do not know how to repair the Windows Bootloader after removing GRUB.

This also saves you having to use the Windows 7 repair/install disc to restore the bootloader.

It requires the .NET framework to be installed.

Another common problem for people new to dual booting,
is when they install an older version of Windows along side Vista/7.

XP can't detect Windows 7 or Vista, so it overwrites the Vista/7 bootloader, and does not give you an option to boot into it.


For future reference:

The safest and easiest way to install Ubuntu along side Windows, is to install it using WUBI


This basically lets you install Linux into a file located in your windows partition, in otherwords a virtual hard drive file.

It is not a virtual machine either, so its almost just as fast as installing it normally. After it installs in windows, you will then restart the machine and boot into the Ubuntu setup

And to uninstall it, you simply uninstall it from Add/Remove programs in Windows!

You cannot get any easier than that.

It will even download the latest version of Ubuntu for you, or which ever other flavour of Linux thats supported.

I would recommend this method to anyone new to trying out Linux.

Chet T16

Wow, that was easy.

I downloaded EasyBCD and it was just one click to fix the MBR. I used Paragon Partition Manager to delete the ubuntu partition then resize the windows ones