One of our kids accidently downloaded Ubuntu on our family pc and we need instructions on how to uninstall it. We are not highly technical, just basic pc users.

Thank you.

Format the drive/partition? If the kid's not a troll, let him try it out?

You'd have to be able to mount the drive from the windows side, format it, and then boot your windows recovery disc, open the console, and type in "fixmbr".

But yet again, why? D;

Right now the laptop needs to used for homework and not spending time learning something new - that can be done during winter break. Is there somewhere that we can get plain instructions on how to uninstall it? I understand the concept that you talk about but have no idea how to do it.

I assume windows has been removed from the computer and replaced with Ubuntu.

If I am right and this is the case, you will need to install windows again. Find the restore CD that came with your laptop and boot from that, and follow the steps for restoring.

You don't need to uninstall ubuntu, just install windows on top of it. (which will wipe the disk automatically, and then put windows on it).

Or, get your windows CD and install windows from that. Your kid would probably know enough to help you out with this.

If you have any computer savvy friends, you should contact them for help with installing windows.

When your kid installed ubuntu, did they leave windows on the laptop, or install ubuntu on the entire disk? When the laptop is powered on, do you get several choices (consisting of several different ubuntu kernels, and at the bottom a Windows XP option)?
If that is the case, you could just boot windows XP, and use it like that for now. No need to uninstall ubuntu; your kids can still do their homework by booting into windows if they need to.

I know enough to do the restore or install from the CD, I am just trying to understand the Ubuntu side -- how do I figure out from Ubuntu if Windows is still resident on the laptop? Is there a way to remove Ubuntu without wiping out anything - or did that happen when it was downloaded?

Run "sudo fdisk -l" (without quotes and that's a lowercase L) in a terminal and see if there any partitions which have FAT32 or NTFS listed as their filesystem type. Here's an example:

Post the output here if you're unsure.

By "downloaded" presumably you mean "installed". The Windows partitions may have been deleted when Ubuntu was installed, we can't say for sure.

Your reply is helpful, thank you. How do I get to the terminal for the command line? I said download because I thought it came from the internet but I just found out that a friend of his left a CD in the drive and it had Ubuntu on it.

Turn on the laptop so it starts Ubuntu. Then press these keys simultaneously.

ctrl, alt, f1

Then log in, and there you are at the command line.

or once gnome has loaded press alt-f2 and type xterm

All of you have been very helpful - thank you so much. There are no FAT32 or NTFS formats so looks like we will have to start from scratch. I will definately tell others that linuxquestions.org is friendly and helpful!

How do I logout from the terminal line?

"exit" should do it. If you want to reboot, try "sudo shutdown -r now" (or perhaps "reboot" simply works under Ubuntu, but I'm not certain).

I tried exit before and it took me to the login - does it not shut down - I need to do that?

I'm going to venture to say that Ubuntu is not installed on the hard disk, but is running from the CD. Just take the CD out of the CDROM drive before starting the computer again. If that's the case, Windows was unharmed and no further action is needed -- just don't boot with that CD in the computer.

No, it isn't booting from the CD. I shut down manually after exiting.

I downloaded Ubuntu with and external hard drive. Windows would not let me remove it so I went (running XP Prof) to Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore to a date before Ubuntu was downloaded. It worked.