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So basically I had Windows 10 and Ubuntu 14.04 installed on a dual boot using grub. I decided I didn't want ubuntu any more so I deleted the Linux hard drive partitions out of my disk manger on windows 10. Now I rebooted my pc hoping to skip grub and go straight to windows but I'm stuck on this error. I have an HP Pavilion Desktop. I've tried booting into the HP system recovery and startup manager but it goes straight to this error on grub. The error is "Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible device or file completions." Also whenever I type into the grub thing I get random letters instead of the ones I press. PLEASE HELP ME!!

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  • Use grub boot repair. It should delete grub and restore your system to its former glory
    – brndn2k
    Mar 14, 2017 at 7:59

2 Answers 2

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I had the exact same problem. Stuck on the GRUB screen. No Windows, no Ubuntu! How I reached there? I wanted to remove Ubuntu, so I logged into Windows, deleted the Ubuntu partitions using Disk Management, then restarted my PC and got stuck at the GRUB screen.

All solutions that involve a Windows Recovery Disk (bootrec.exe and bootsect.exe) and those involving an Ubuntu live CD (boot-repair and grub-install) did not work. Should I have run bootrec or bootsect before I had deleted the partitions and restarted? I don't know. But it was too late now! Not until I found this hidden comment that saved my day.

I simply typed exit at the GRUB command prompt and was finally booted into Windows 10. As simple as that! If you want a "clean" boot into Windows, directly without having to type exit each time, then this is the procedure to follow. Once logged into Windows (after the exit from the grub loader), run cmd.exe with administrator privileges and use the DISKPART utility. No recovery disk needed. The procedure is detailed here, which is copied from here. I also copy it briefly down here in case any links are lost in the future.

  1. Run cmd.exe with administrator privileges.
  2. Run diskpart utility.
  3. At the DISKPART> prompt, type: list disk then sel disk X where X is the drive your boot files reside on. To make sure which drive to choose, you can open the Disk Management GUI tool in Windows (since we are running full Windows version) not a rescue disk. In Disk Management, you will find Disk 0 is usually the boot C drive, and hence the one to choose. You can also recognize it from within the command line DISKPART> from its size. In modern systems, it is usually the smaller (or the only) drive, the SSD one.
  4. Type list vol to see all partitions (volumes) on the disk.
  5. Type sel vol Y where Y is the System volume (you find System written in the Info column in the previous listing). There is very good chance it is the only FAT32 partition. In Disk Management, it is clearly marked as EFI System Partition. You can match the size with the one that appears in DISKPART>.
  6. Assign a drive letter by typing: assign letter=Z: where Z is a free (unused) drive letter. This is all what we need DISKPART> for.
  7. Type exit to leave DISKPART>. Now we're back to the Windows (DOS) prompt.
  8. At the cmd prompt, type: Z: and hit enter, where Z was the drive letter you just created.
  9. Type dir to list the directories on this mounted EFI partition.
  10. If you are in the right place, you should see a directory called EFI.
  11. Type cd EFI and then dir to list the child directories inside EFI.
  12. Type rmdir /S ubuntu to delete the Ubuntu boot directory.
  13. Done! Restart and see for yourself a clean Windows boot.
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    The only solution that worked for me!
    – eckes
    May 16, 2020 at 11:08
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It sounds like what you've done is left the grub stage-1 bootloader on the drive, but when you deleted the linux system you likely destroyed the /boot file hierarchy which contained stage 2 and the linux kernel. Thus, you're left with the minimal command line. The /boot partition normally contains a folder /boot/grub which has a file grub.cfg which lists the Operating Systems on the systems and the options used to boot them. Without that, grub is lost, and grub wrote over the Windows bootloader, so windows can't do a direct boot.

I've usually only heard of people deleting Windows, not Linux after coming off a dual-boot system so I don't have an official fix for this. You could attempt using boot-repair from a live-cd to see if it could repair the Windows portion of the bootloader. Failing that, I believe your best option is to get ahold of a Windows Recovery Disk or Installation Disk. Of course, before doing any of that, I would recommend backing up any important data to a different drive, if at all possible.

If for some reason reinstalling windows is not an option, you may just want to install a linux system on a very tiny partition just so you can use the boot system. Unfortunately the only way that I'm aware of to get rid of GRUB entirely at this point and go back to just the windows bootloader would be to have the windows installation or recovery dvd/cd. For that process, you can follow the steps in this answer.

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