How to remove Ubuntu?

[wavinwayne]

I have Ubuntu 10.10 loaded along side Windows Vista on my office PC. Nothing against Ubuntu, but I rarely use it, and I need to reclaim the hard drive space being used by Ubuntu. Basically, I want to remove any trace that Ubuntu ever existed on my system. What is the proper procedure for doing this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[javacontour]

I'd get an ISO of GPARTED or is that GPARTD and boot it. You can resize partitions and make your Windows Vista partition active again so it boots without needing GRUB to load it.

I suspect your Ubuntu partition is active right now and it loads either Ubuntu or Windows from a menu in GRUB.

If that's the case, then you can reclaim that space with the above mentioned tool.

Windows will want to check it's file system when it boots since you resized it.

If you don't want to resize Windows, you could simply mark the current Windows partition active, delete the Ubuntu partition, then make an additional partition for your data using the just deleted Ubuntu partition. That way, the current Windows partition will not resize and you can separate your data from the binaries.

 

[javacontour]

GParted

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

FWIW, I used the latest release 0.8.0-5 to make the Windows7 partition on my new laptop smaller, remove the 2nd NTFS partition, create a 32GB FAT32 and make room for Solaris 11 build 162.

For those wondering why FAT32? It's so I can share files between Solaris and Win7. Solaris doesn't have an NTFS driver so I store files I might use on both in the FAT32 partition.

 

[buickman50401]

If GRUB is your current bootloader and/or unbuntu is set as the active partition you're going to need to fix the MBR/bootloader issue.

Boot from your Vista CD/DVD.

Go into repair installation and get to the screen where you are given like 5 options. Chose the command prompt option.

With the command prompt open type:
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

You might need to run the fixboot command twice (I always do as running it a second time isn't going to harm anything).

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-safely-uninstall-ubuntu-in-windows-dual-boot-environment/

Additionally as mentioned you're going to have to delete the linux partitions and resize the windows partition. Gparted is what you will need for this.

 

[wavinwayne]

Wow, thanks guys. I had no idea the process would be as involved as you guys have described. I think I'll just leave things as they are and buy an external drive for additional storage. Too afraid I might screw something up trying to get rid of Ubuntu.

 

[greenaccord02]

It's actually pretty simple, despite how it sounds. Probably wouldn't take you 10 minutes to do the whole thing. Of course, this would also be a great opportunity to do a fresh install of windows!

 

[buickman50401]

Originally Posted By: greenaccord02
It's actually pretty simple, despite how it sounds. Probably wouldn't take you 10 minutes to do the whole thing. Of course, this would also be a great opportunity to do a fresh install of windows!

Wayne, he's right. It's not involved at all. It will take you less than 10 minutes. The bootrec /fixmbr and /fixboot are pretty much idiot proof. Just two simple commands to run.

Gparted - so long as you pay attention to what you're doing is dead simple and mostly safe. I say mostly because there is always some risk with when resizing partitions that have an OS already installed on it.

That being said, I've used Gparted for years to partition systems before installing XP and on systems with XP or Vista already installed to partition the disks.

Last month I used it to merge the partitions on my old laptop after removing Linux Mint while leaving XP intact.

 

[occupant]

I'll be going through this in about 6-9 months when my wife decides to upgrade her laptop. I'll take her E6410, she'll get something new and shiny, and my poor little Acer will get formatted and refreshed to Windows 7 only. Should be a fairly simple deal, I don't expect it to take longer than an hour or so.