How to remove Ubuntu and put Windows back on?

Question

I know nothing at all about Linux, and I desperately need to get my laptop back up and running again with Windows, how do I remove Ubuntu?

Answer 1

To remove Ubuntu, you will need a Windows Recovery CD or Installation CD, or a Ubuntu Live CD.

Note: If you don't have a Windows Installation or Recovery CD available, you can download the Windows 7 ISO file here. You cannot install Windows with a genuine Purchased Product Key though, as these ISO files are 100% legal and will only install as an Evaluation copy for 30 days without a product key.

To remove GRUB:

1. Grab a Windows recovery media or installation CD and boot from it. You should see this on a recovery media.

   

   You should see this on an installation media. Click "Repair your computer" and you should see a screen like the first image.

2. Open the Command Prompt, then type bootrec /fixmbr into the Command Prompt.

   

3. Reboot and boot into Windows. Then follow the steps below to remove the Ubuntu partitions.

   (Images from HowtoGeek)

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If you don't have a Windows recovery CD or you are too lazy to download and burn the ISO files mentioned before, you can use Boot-repair. It is a tool that fixes most boot problems(Windows or Ubuntu). I suggest using a Windows CD if possible.

To use boot repair:

1. Boot from a Ubuntu live CD or USB

2. Type these lines in the terminal one line at a time.

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install boot-repair
   

3. Search for Boot-Repair in the Dash and launch it.

   

   To fix your computer with Boot-repair, simply click the "Recommended Repair" button. Then follow the steps below to remove the Ubuntu Partitions.

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To delete the Ubuntu Partitions:

1. Go to Start, right click Computer, then select Manage. Then select Disk Management from the sidebar.

   

2. Right-click your Ubuntu partitions and select "Delete". Check before you delete!

3. Then, right-click the partition that is on the Left of the free space. Select "Extend Volume". Go through the Wizard and Finish it.

4. Done!

Another note from Tanner: If you are using an extended partition, you might have to remove the big extended partition to make the space unallocated.

Answer 2

1. Boot a live CD with Ubuntu
2. Choose "Try Ubuntu"
3. Download and install OS-Uninstaller.
4. Start the software and select what operating system you want to uninstall.
5. Apply
6. When all is over, reboot your computer, and voila, only windows is on your computer!

Answer 3

Actually the solution to this is very easy, anyone can do it. First things first. Download something called EasyBCD (there's a free version, you have to download it into Windows as it's a .exe) http://neosmart.net/download.php?id=1 run through the set-up.

1. Launch EasyBCD and go to the sixth button down, EasyBCD deployment. Since you're a Windows XP user, select Write the Windows XP Bootloader to the MBR then press the big red button called "Write to MBR"
2. Next head up to the second button called "Edit boot Menu" and select the first option "Skip the boot menu" and click save settings. Congrats, you now have Windows XP bootloader back, and it will automatically boot into Windows, but we aren't done yet. You still have Ubuntu on your system, we want to change that.
3. Open up disk management and find your Ubuntu partition and the Ubuntu Swap Partition (I assume you know how big it is, [the swap is about two gigs, should be right next to the Linux partition]). Delete the swap first, and then delete the Ubuntu partition. If done properly you will get Unaccounted space for HD and the swap will become "Free Space" time to also fix that.

4. Next right click on the Free-Space partition (swap space) and delete it again, it should become part of the unaccounted space. Now you don't want to just leave all that empty space on your HD. Right click on your Windows partition now, and click extend the volume. It should default into the maximum size of your HD, (which you want so XP has all the space.) and click continue. There you go, it'll do it's thing and Windows XP should now have your entire HD, Ubuntu will be gone, and you Will have the XP bootloader back. Hope that helped for you!

   (Video tutorial from Tech-Harvest doing basically the same thing but on Windows 7 - http://youtu.be/AAWBZq04Izc )

Answer 4

You can go into the Disk Management utility and delete the Ubuntu partition. Right click My Computer, select Manage, Disk Utility. Once you delete the partition, right click My Computer, select Properties and go to the Advanced tab. Go into the Start Up and Recovery, set Windows as the default operating system and set the Time to display the list of operating systems to 0 and click Ok.

Answer 5

You need to restore the MBR that was overwritten by grub when you installed ubuntu. In the old days, you ran fdisk /MBR on your system disk. The way to do it in Windows XP is to run the "Windows Recovery Console" which can be run from the installation disk or installed to the hard drive and run from there.

The instructions for installing the Recovery Console are here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314058

However, since you don't have the CD you'll need to try installing it from what you have already. Open up the run dialogue (win+r, or start->run) and enter this:

%windir%\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons

Then you will have to reboot into windows and select the recovery console while it's booting. From there you will need to run FIXMBR which is documented here: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx

Once this is done successfully, your computer will boot straight into windows again.

Answer 6

The way to "delete" Ubuntu is to delete the partition it's using. That will make the partition available for reformatting and use in another OS.

If you can still run Windows, use its disk manager to delete the Ubuntu partition. You could then format it to use in Windows. Or, perhaps (I don't know very much about Windows) expand an existing partition.

You can also boot the Ubuntu LiveCD and choose the "Try Ubuntu" option. After it loads, find and run gparted and remove the partition.

If Windows and Ubuntu are both gone and you want to reinstall Windows, you can repartition and reformat during the installation.

Answer 7

If you can boot Ubuntu the Live CD, choose "Try Ubuntu" option. Then try installing it again by choosing manual partitioning, It is the last option in the 'Prepare your disk' step. Reinstall it in the same partition you tried before.

• First delete the old Ubuntu partition, (you can recognize the old Ubuntu partition by looking at the partition type column, it should have the type as ext4 or ext3)

• Then create a new partition by clicking 'Add' button. In the new dialog change the "Do not use the partition" with ext4, place a 'tick' mark at 'format' check box, and in the bottom select list, select /, then click OK.

• Check that, you choose the bootloader install device as /dev/sda (if you are installing on the local hard disk). Then proceed.

• See if any error message appears. If it completes successfully, it should give you a message with two options - "Keep trying Live CD" and "Restart your Computer to use newly installed system". Restart your laptop.

I think it should work.

Answer 8

If you're in to paid software I highly recommend Acronis. Paragon is also good. It has a lot of interesting options. It allows you to do everything you need to in order to do this. The order of operations is:

1)Get live media that will let you perform all these operations without an OS or MBR backup
see acronis link
2)Delete the Ubuntu partitions(probably anything that's not NTFS or FAT32)
3)Resize your windows partition to fill the disk
4)Apply changes and possibly reboot depending on which version of which software you have
5)Run the 'fix boot problems' wizard in Acronis. It's magic.

Alternately, you could use supergrubdisk. Directions on their wiki include screenshots and step by step directions.

Answer 9

A simpler method - Burn an rBoot CD and boot from it. When the menu shows up, select your Windows partition.

When Windows loads, in the disk management, right click on the boot partition and apply the boot flag. Restart.

Hopefully, this will work.

If it does, delete the Linux partition from the disk management. You're done.

Answer 10

What I did was

moved new drive into c: place

moved old C: drive into D: place

booted off D:

i used a disk copy program to copy the 'partition' of my XP to my new bigger HD. then I tryed to boot of C:...no go

I then went into windows install, and went to dos and used bootrec/ fixmbr command (as shown above) on the C:

I then powered down and removed the old drive completely.

i boot ok fine off the new C: 250GB windows ONLY system. and I still have a backup 60GB with linux on it too...