Removing Linux

candtalan

Norman_Castle wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. I am trying to remove ubunto and its partitions as it is causing problems on start up. I've had xp for a long time and was advised to try ubunto. I installed it to run from the disc, part of this included instaling a dual boot screen with choices between windows and ubunto on start up. Windows was fine but ubunto seemed slow so I did a full install including updates. Since this install, on start up there is an extra screen very similar to the screen shown at the start of this page http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-...t-environment/ titled GNU GRUB VERSION 1.97 beta4. After scrolling down and selecting windows the dual boot screen appears as above.

My conclusion here is that you may have in fact installed Ubuntu twice. Once first, within Windows (wubi) and on a later occasion, also installed Ubuntu into its own partitions.

It is always a good idea to have a good backup of your data, emails, letters, photos, etc. Now is a good time!

One way to start to sort the problem out would be first
1) to run Windows, however slowly, and uninstall the Ubuntu that you will see (I think) in your installed programs.

and then 2) check windows still runs ok. It should be similar to before.

3) it looks like you will still have the partition installation of Ubuntu at this stage, so you will still see the grub boot menu that you mentioned. If when starting up, you choose the top Ubuntu line to boot then Ubuntu should run ok. However, you want to only have Windows, that is ok.

4) You do not actually need to remove the Ubuntu partitions to only run Windows, you can simply 'repair' the Master Boot Record (MBR) back to the normal Windows type of mbr and when you boot up then you will only see Windows. You will still have some unwanted partitions on the hard drive (Ubuntu) but they will not run, but you will be using a reduced size on your hard drive.

5) to 'repair' the MBR for normal Windows you can use an XP CD. A borrowed one will be ok, you only need to run it briefly. You need to get to a flashing cursor prompt on what looks like DOS, and then type the short command
fixmbr
(then hit enter key)

the detail instructions here seem quite good:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/483/xp_repair_fix_master_boot_record_recovery_console

6) none of this should change or move or delete any partitions, so as long as you are careful doing stuff then your Windows data should not be damaged. Keep in mind that as time goes on, then XP updates can easily make xp seem to go slower anyway.

7) if you later decide to get your whole hard drive space back by deleting the Ubuntu partitions, this can be done fairly easily too, but it is more important to have first backed up your data because changing partitions always carries a small risk of data loss.

hope that helps?