How To Safely Uninstall Ubuntu, Linux, Unix From A Windows Dual-Boot PC
Linux is a great operating system and more often than not,
it’s the installation of Linux that is the matter of discussion.
For a change, I will be talking about how to uninstall Linux
Ubuntu (or other operating systems) from a dual boot windows pc, and still
being able to boot into other OS without much work. So let’s get started right
away.
Backup your Linux files
It pops up everytime, but backup really is very important.
If you have been using your Linux system for some time, chances are you would
have created files you wouldn’t want to loose. In such a case, you can boot
into Linux, backup your files (check out your Home directory) on an external
device or onto a Windows partition.
Alternatively if you somehow managed to mess up and can’t
boot into Linux, you can use ext2 IFS which allows you access to your Linux
paritions. It can only read ext2 and ext3 filesystems though. If you are using
other filesystems, you would have to look around a bit for a similar
application. In any case, you can always boot from a Linux live CD to backup
files if everything else fails.
Delete Linux Partitions
Next step: delete every Linux partition. That would include
everything – boot, swap, home, whatever way you set up your system, it is time
to delete all Linux partitions. There are a couple of ways to achieve this,
easiest being from within Windows’ Computer Management. You need to:
Log in to an account with administrative privileges.
Right click on My Computer, click ‘Manage’.
Choose ‘Disk Management’ listed under ‘Storage’ and you will
see all of your partitions listed there.
Next, you need to identify Linux partitions. The Linux
partitions generally don’t have a file system listed with them if Windows
doesn’t recognize it, so this can serve as a clue.
Other ways can be
identifying by size or partition number. You can use partition managers, these
are generally better at identifying filesystems. Go ahead, delete the
partitions, just make sure you delete the correct ones. Linux is gone and so is
GRUB, which allowed you to choose operating system to use at boot time. So
currently, you cannot boot into any other operating system, without some help.
We are going to fix that soon.
Restore MBR (MBR- Master Boot Record)
{ Through this step you will learn recovering window when you delete or Touch partitions of your derive }
As we noted, GRUB is gone and so is the ability to boot into
Windows. You would now need to boot from the Windows CD/DVD to restore the
Master Boot Record. You can also use other Live CDs like one of my absolute
favorites and highly recommended HBCD just in case you don’t have Windows
installation media handy. Here are the steps:
Boot from Windows CD/DVD and choose “Repair” when it shows
up.
Choose command prompt on the resulting screen and run the
following two commands:
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
XP users need to run the recovery console from Windows XP CD
and then type fixmbr when at the command prompt.
Reclaim free space
Restart now, remove the CD and you should be able to boot
into your Windows installation. Once there, you should go ahead and reclaim the
unpartitioned free space which was previously occupied by Linux. Doing so is
simple and straight forward:
Fire up Disk Management as before.
Right-click on the unparitioned space, choose new partition
or new logical drive.
Specify the size and other options according to your needs
and you are done.
The free space should now be accessible from My Computer
like any other partition. Alternatively, you can create multiple partitions
from the free space or resize existing partitions to suit your needs.You can
use utilities like GParted, Easues Partition Master or any one of the many
partition managers on HBCD to perform such advanced tasks easily.
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