Aug 27, 2009

Recently I had been playing with Kubuntu on my Windows 7 machine. Don’t get me wrong, Kubuntu and other Linux distributions are great. I wanted to remove it because I wasn’t really using it anymore and I was getting sick of booting my machine and forgetting to change the GRUB option at start-up to boot into Windows 7.

I know that the GRUB can be edited so that Windows 7 would boot first but I no-longer had the need for Kubuntu so I wanted to remove it all together including the GRUB.

First of all I made a really dumb n00b error of booting into Windows 7 and deleting the partitions that Kubuntu occupied. Of course, the GRUB remained and my computer wouldn’t even start. To get back to being able to boot again, I inserted my Kubuntu DVD and re-installed so the GRUB would work again.

Now I thought, maybe EasyBCD would be able to remove the GRUB from within Windows 7 and then I could delete the Kubuntu partitions again. Unfortunately EasyBCD could not do this.

My next plan was to boot from my Windows 7 DVD and use the option to fix start-up errors. This was not a good plan either. The GRUB remained but I now had a Windows Vista GUI start-up instead of the much more pretty Windows 7 one.

I decided to do some research before making anymore stupid mistakes – RTFM comes to mind.

So I discovered that the first step to remove the GRUB (and Kubuntu or other disto of Linux) is to boot from your Windows 7 DVD, select your language and then to choose the repair option.

At the repair option you should choose the command prompt and use the command: bootsect /nt60 C:

Now restart your computer and Windows 7 should boot without entering the GRUB because this has been removed from your machine.

If you have somehow got the old Windows Vista start-up GUI displaying on start-up, then you should wait for your computer to boot into Windows 7 and run the command prompt as an Administrator. To get the Windows 7 GUI start-up back, use the following command: bootrec /fixmbr

Once you’re happy that your computer is booting without the GRUB and directly into Windows 7 you can remove all traces of the Linux distribution going into Disk Management (Windows Key + R and type diskmgmt.msc). Simply delete the partitions and then expand the rest of the drive containing data to fill the empty space.

The above is just a brief overview of what I did but if you have any questions or would like anything in more detail, please contact me or leave a comment.

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Chris Williamson

My hard drive setup is weird and none of the options i saw had worked. So i went the /help and i found that “bootsect /nt60 all /force /mbr” worked fine for me.
awlakers

Worked great! Used to get my Windows 8 CP installation up and running. Found the a free windows recovery iso out there as well…do a little searching, don’t pay for it from NeoSmart!
IncorruptibleS

What happens if you dont have the windows 7 cd? I dowloaded my windows 7 from microsofts website. need to get rid of ubuntu and kubuntu please. and Im a total noob.

http://www.lukeaddison.com 1uk3

How did you install Windows 7? You must have put it on either a disc or USB stick or similar.

If you used the USB install method, then you just use the Windows USB instead of the disc – booting from the USB installation. Then just follow the instructions as normal.

Let me know and I’ll try to help.

Bigbadmick

A million billion thank you’s for this. Saved me having to do a full re-install and worked perfectly first time. You saved my bacon on this one and i can never repay the debt to you.

http://www.lukeaddison.com 1uk3

Always glad to know I’ve been of some help.

Hmitheos Here

Before installing linux, I had both vista and seven… I don’t use linux anymore. How can I remove both linux and grub? I installed it on my USB flash drive and since then I need it to boot my system. how can I bring back the boot menu selection for windows? thank you in advance.
Windowsman

Thank you so much. Really saved me here. I could not point the master boot loader away from grub towards windows, but this did the trick.

bootsect /nt60 C: /mbr

Many thanks!
Gary

I’ve been working on a new installation of Ubuntu on a new hard drive. I don’t know if the problem was a difference between old and new GRUB or what. All I know is that I could not boot into Windows. I could get to the files easily enough, but I couldn’t boot into it. I tried everything, scouring and scouring the interwebz. Everything failed.
Then I came here. Both I and my wife thank you. The “bootsect /nt60 c:” command did the trick. I just 30 seconds ago FINALLY saw the Win7 splash screen.
THANK YOU(!) for posting this.