Want to uninstall Ubuntu but can not boot into Ubuntu, only windows

Question

I installed Ubuntu onto an old work laptop a while ago and of course I love it, however I will have to hand this laptop back into work at sometime as it has become pretty old now, so I want to uninstall Ubuntu before I do. Problem is work pushed out an update to the machine which encrypts all partitions, since then although Ubuntu is still shown in the boot loader, it won't boot as I assume it has been encrypted and this is blocking it. So is there anyway of removing Ubuntu from the machine without needing to actually boot into it? As all the tutorials I have seen ask you to boot into Ubuntu.

The laptop is running win xp 32bit SP3 as its original OS and Ubuntu 12.04

Answer 1

Ubuntu no longer works, so there is no question of using it.

Therefore you will have to delete whichever partitions from within Windows, or more easily perhaps just format the correct partition(s).

No problemo!

Answer 2

you need to restore the MBR of you're hard drive so he can boot directly on Windows, to do that use you're windows xp cd copy . When he asking you , press R to recovery console. When you're in the recovery console type

fixmbr

then

exit

to reboot the computer

Once this done , simple erase the ubuntu partition using windows xp tools (configuration panel > administrative tools> computer)

by the way this is not directly related to ubunu