How to completely remove Ubuntu 12.04 after restoring computer to factory settings?

Question

I have reset my computer to factory settings (without knowing that Ubuntu will not be uninstalled). After setting up, Ubuntu was still listed at the start up boot manager, when I selected it, it gave me errors. Ubuntu 12.04 also stole my 18GB hard drive. Now, I can’t find Ubuntu uninstaller in my programs nor I can’t find Ubuntu files in my C drive. By the way, I installed Ubuntu 12.04 with WUBI installer. How do I completely remove Ubuntu from my computer? Please help me fix this problem.

Answer 1

How to completely remove Ubuntu installed with Wubi...

Normal uninstall

Uninstall it by going to the control panel, Add/Remove programs and find the Ubuntu entry and double click to automatically uninstall.

Manual Uninstall

If the normal uninstall didn't work for some reason e.g. you already manually deleted the \ubuntu directory manually or did a factory restore) you should follow the instructions in the Wubi guide to manually uninstall.

If you think that there's still some space 'stolen' from your drive, then you should run chkdsk /f (note that this requires a reboot if you're running it on the C: drive). After that, look in the hidden, protected folder \found.000 (or .001 etc.) and look within that for any file that is Gigabytes in size and remove it. (If you had important data you lost, don't remove it, you can probably recover the data... but that's another topic).

One area that is fiddly is the BCD store for Windows Vista/7. If you've tried to manually remove Ubuntu or done that factory restore, but the Ubuntu entry remains, then it's simple to remove it using bcdedit:

To use bcdedit, run cmd.exe (Run as administrator), then enter bcdedit to show all boot entries, note the {GUID} specified for the Ubuntu entry, and then remove it: bcdedit /delete {GUID}

Here's an example:

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-us
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {6529eb15-62be-11e0-b237-a8486d1f5063}
displayorder            {current}
                        {c001df0c-5ec0-11e1-a466-005056c00008}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 10

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  en-us
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {6529eb17-62be-11e0-b237-a8486d1f5063}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {6529eb15-62be-11e0-b237-a8486d1f5063}
nx                      OptIn

Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier              {c001df0c-5ec0-11e1-a466-005056c00008}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \ubuntu\winboot\wubildr.mbr
description             Ubuntu

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /delete {c001df0c-5ec0-11e1-a466-005056c00008}

Make sure you run cmd.exe as an administrator (not logged in an administrator account... there is a difference).

Answer 2

You can go online to here on a different computer and download the Ubuntu Live CD software. Install it to a USB drive or burn it to a disk following the instructions. Boot up your computer using that. If you need to copy your files to save them (if you don't have a backup) then get an external hard disk (I'm not sure if a flash drive can handle the size of your files) and copy all your files to it. Then, after that is done, on the Live CD (you should have been doing all these steps on the Ubuntu Live CD by the way) start a clean install of Ubuntu. If you DON'T want Ubuntu anymore, use the Live CD to reformat your disk. You should be fine, after that.