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Several months ago my Windows 7 installation crashed and burned on me. I couldn't even get it to boot over to the "repair" option to try to restore factory defaults. I don't know what was wrong with it, but I had been curious about Ubuntu/Linux for some time and wanted to give it a shot.

I've tried giving Ubuntu 14.10 a go of it since December 2014, but it's just gotten to the point where it is too limiting. I don't understand most of the instructions people give me (i.e. I have no clue what a 'chroot' is or any of the jargon) and I want to scrap it and go back to Windows.

I was just checking things out and when I first boot up the computer, the GRUB screen lists a Windows Repair option now. I can get it to load, but it throws an error stating "No file system recognized". I assume this is because at this point I have my whole hard drive partitioned to Ubuntu.

Compounding matters: I don't have a Windows 7 CD. I bought this machine from Best Buy a few years ago (read: out of warranty) but it had Windows 7 on it by default, hence the restore factory settings option I have in the GRUB screen.

So what I'm looking for at this point is a concise way to remove Ubuntu from my system and reformat the whole hard drive to a Windows-friendly format like NTFS or whatever Windows 7 likes. Then, I should be able to snag the repair option, restore factory defaults, and roll from there.

So please, can you explain the uninstall process in as basic a manner as possible? I just don't know my way around Ubuntu well. I know how to open a command prompt and I do have the Ubuntu install CD. I read something about using a "bootrec /fixmbr" option but when I do that, I get an error stating that the bootrec command was not found. That's if I run it from either a command prompt while in Ubuntu or from the GRUB screen by pushing "c" for a command prompt there. I don't know where else I'd type it in if not in either of those places.

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2 Answers 2

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You may need to buy a Windows CD to get Windows back since you said that the entire disk is devoted to Ubuntu.

The reason you cannot reformat the hard drive is that you are using the operating system from the hard drive; the formatting program recognizes this and prevents you from removing the operating system from under itself.

Run the program, Diskmanager, and check the number of partitions on the drive; if you only have 1, then you need to buy a Windows CD.
If you have 2 or more, then the restoration copy of the Windows installation may still be on the drive. To utilize this, you will need to create a bootable CD (or USB drive) with gparted. It's very easy to make a bootable CD (instructions are provided at the web site), and a little more difficult to make the bootable USB (some computers also won't boot from USB). gparted will allow you to reformat the Ubuntu partition as NTFS.

This is the part I don't know about. How to access the restoration partition to get the original copy of Windows.

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  • Ok, how would I run Diskmanager? Seems that to do anything in Ubuntu you need some combination of "sudo" or "apt-get" or some such. I'll try searching for install directions in the meantime. Edit: When I try running Diskmanager through the Software Center, I get an error stating "Dependency not satisfiable: python-support (>=0.90.0)"
    – 1John5vs7
    Mar 16, 2015 at 6:34
  • Update: So I never managed to find Diskmanager, but I did get Gparted working, and there were at least 5 partitions on the drive, 2 of which were in NTFS format and one of which has the label "SYSTEM RESERVED" and which I assume is where my Windows restore files are hanging out. That's in /dev/sda2 and is 100MB in size. /dev/sda1 is also NTFS and is labeled "PQSERVICE" and has is 13GB in size. I'm currently running from a Ubuntu bootable CD and I've totally deleted the partition that had Ubuntu on it. I tried rebooting from the disk drive and got a GRUB error screen. How do I get to restore?
    – 1John5vs7
    Mar 16, 2015 at 7:01
  • That 100M partition isn't your windows recovery partition, it is not big enough. It was likely the PQSERVICE one. You may need to acquire or borrow a Win 7 DVD so that you can boot it and run windows System Repair. No idea if that will fix your system though. Mar 16, 2015 at 12:29
  • OK, at this point I've tracked down what I think is a functional Windows 7, 64-bit ISO file (all the links I've found to microsoft.com pages are dead links). I've used Windows Disc Image Burner on another computer to burn the ISO to a DVD. When I pop that in my computer and use the Boot Menu to select "boot from CD", I get the same screen saying there is a GRUB error, and all I have is a DOS-like command prompt (or I guess it's a GRUB command prompt?) and I've no idea what to do. Why would it fail to run from the CD? I am sort of at a loss here....
    – 1John5vs7
    Mar 16, 2015 at 21:00
  • Update: Ok, I've got the repair CD going, but it seems that when I'm running from the CD, it only ever lets me access the 3rd partition of my disk drive. I have a 1TB disc with 3 partitions..the PQService is labeled "REPAIR" in the Windows booter, but I can't see that to try to repair it...the only time I see it is when I try to install Windows, and then it allows me to choose any of the 3 partitions (though obviously PQSERVICE is too small for a full install of Windows). Any thoughts as to how I might get the auto-repair feature to see the other partitions?
    – 1John5vs7
    Mar 16, 2015 at 21:15
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So I was able to download a Windows 7 ISO, then burn it to a DVD and use that to reinstall Windows. I wanted to let anyone who was checking know so that this had closure. Thanks for your assistance.

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  • Glad you got what you needed. :)
    – LDC3
    Mar 17, 2015 at 1:33

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