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I have SONY VAIO with windows 7 pre installed. I have installed the UBUNTU in other partition to work as dual boot. I am trying now to restore the factory settings with ALT + F10 which is not working any more. Each time its giving me screen to choose operating system. How do I restore my system now?

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  • Do you want to remove Ubuntu (grub) and return to a PC with only Windows installed?
    – Ninad
    Nov 20, 2013 at 11:29
  • @ninad116 Yes I want to keep windows only
    – Umar
    Nov 20, 2013 at 13:52

3 Answers 3

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I assume you want to delete Ubuntu and restore Windows to original state (factory settings)? Note that I'm not familiar with Vaio, however on boot screen (grub) you should be able to see installed systems. For Windows you should have more than one entry and the first one sda/dev1 (or similar most likely) is rescue partition of Windows. Boot there and follow to guide to re-install Windows.

Hope it solve your problem.

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I'm not familiar with Vaio in particular, but these days most computers come with a hidden 'rescue' partition that's used to 'restore factory settings'. That it doesn't work for you could indicate that you have deleted this partition (perhaps when installing Ubuntu).

Take a look at the partition table (eg. with gparted) and check if there's an extra partition you don't use; it'll probably be 10-20 GiB in size, and may be hidden, labeled 'Rescue' or somesuch, and formatted with either NTFS or FAT. If it's there, try editing your grub configuration to show it as a boot option from the menu -- perhaps it's just that the BIOS is confused by the partition layout, but if you boot it directly it'll work fine.

If it isn't there, then the only way to reimage the system ('restore to factory settings') is to use an external rescue media you probably could have made on first Windows boot. If you don't have it, I'm afraid you need to contact Sony tech support.

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  • The restore partition is still there and I have not deleted it. I did check it and SONY VIAO comes with restore partition as I have paid windows 7 in my laptop. How do I change the GRAB settings?
    – Umar
    Nov 20, 2013 at 11:17
  • @Umar Are you getting option on boot to select which OS to boot into? If you are, there should be an option to boot in Windows (recovery) partition.
    – Ninad
    Nov 20, 2013 at 11:31
  • As @danijelc mentions, perhaps it's already there? Examine the grub menu and see if there isn't a restore entry there.
    – Divide
    Nov 20, 2013 at 11:33
  • Also note that it's possible that Vaio BIOS tries to use a boot parameter for windows instead of booting the recovery partition; this would explain why it fails to activate it. I'm not an expert on windows, but if this is the case, you might try to enter Windows boot menu (IIRC you need to press F8 on boot -- right after you choose windows from the grub menu) and see if there's a recovery option in there.
    – Divide
    Nov 20, 2013 at 11:36
  • snag.gy/soplq.jpg are the current disks on my system
    – Umar
    Nov 20, 2013 at 14:27
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You should go through answers of question How to remove Ubuntu and put Windows back on? before proceeding. I believe you will be redirected to the correct way to do it after referring to this question.

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