0

Several months ago my Windows 7 installation crashed and burned on me. I couldn't even get it to boot over to the "repair" option to try to restore factory defaults. I don't know what was wrong with it, but I had been curious about Ubuntu/Linux for some time and wanted to give it a shot.

I've tried giving Ubuntu 14.10 a go of it since December 2014, but it's just gotten to the point where it is too limiting. I don't understand most of the instructions people give me (i.e. I have no clue what a 'chroot' is or any of the jargon) and I want to scrap it and go back to Windows.

I was just checking things out and when I first boot up the computer, the GRUB screen lists a Windows Repair option now. I can get it to load, but it throws an error stating "No file system recognized". I assume this is because at this point I have my whole hard drive partitioned to Ubuntu.

Compounding matters: I don't have a Windows 7 CD. I bought this machine from Best Buy a few years ago (read: out of warranty) but it had Windows 7 on it by default, hence the restore factory settings option I have in the GRUB screen.

So what I'm looking for at this point is a concise way to remove Ubuntu from my system and reformat the whole hard drive to a Windows-friendly format like NTFS or whatever Windows 7 likes. Then, I should be able to snag the repair option, restore factory defaults, and roll from there.

So please, can you explain the uninstall process in as basic a manner as possible? I just don't know my way around Ubuntu well. I know how to open a command prompt and I do have the Ubuntu install CD. I read something about using a "bootrec /fixmbr" option but when I do that, I get an error stating that the bootrec command was not found. That's if I run it from either a command prompt while in Ubuntu or from the GRUB screen by pushing "c" for a command prompt there. I don't know where else I'd type it in if not in either of those places.

wonea
  • 142
1John5vs7
  • 125
  • 6

2 Answers2

1

You may need to buy a Windows CD to get Windows back since you said that the entire disk is devoted to Ubuntu.

The reason you cannot reformat the hard drive is that you are using the operating system from the hard drive; the formatting program recognizes this and prevents you from removing the operating system from under itself.

Run the program, Diskmanager, and check the number of partitions on the drive; if you only have 1, then you need to buy a Windows CD.
If you have 2 or more, then the restoration copy of the Windows installation may still be on the drive. To utilize this, you will need to create a bootable CD (or USB drive) with gparted. It's very easy to make a bootable CD (instructions are provided at the web site), and a little more difficult to make the bootable USB (some computers also won't boot from USB). gparted will allow you to reformat the Ubuntu partition as NTFS.

This is the part I don't know about. How to access the restoration partition to get the original copy of Windows.

LDC3
  • 546
  • 3
  • 8
1

So I was able to download a Windows 7 ISO, then burn it to a DVD and use that to reinstall Windows. I wanted to let anyone who was checking know so that this had closure. Thanks for your assistance.

1John5vs7
  • 125
  • 6