Will deleting hard drive partitions reset the grub boot loader?
 

I recently got a new computer for college, and since I am going into computer science I decided that I needed to learn Linux so I installed Fedora 22 as dual-boot with windows 10. However, since I don't know jack about Linux, I didn't even know how to install packages so I couldn't get proper drivers for anything working. So, I decided to uninstall Fedora and just VM it until I actually know what I am doing. I followed instructions for uninstalling fedora for bios instead of uefi, which said to delete Fedora partitions, only some of which I was able to delete, and then to reset the mbr using Windows recovery. While I did delete the main Fedora partition, the computer still boots to grub which has 2 options that don't work, and to boot to windows I have to select windows boot manager in the uefi bios menu. After trying a bunch of things not really knowing what I was doing, it still boots to grub.

I would like to wipe the hard drive, or the hard drive's partition table, and reset with a fresh windows install from recovery media. My questions are: Will this reset the boot manager--is the boot manager stored on the hard drive or on ROM? How should I go about resetting the hard drive, and is it possible to brick the hard drive If I do something wrong?

Sorry for my ignorance, I don't really think things through before I try them, and thanks for any help or advice.

Doesn't the recovery media have a "wipe" option? It should. Or rather it should have a full restore option. That should return the system to the original form.

The recovery media should restore everything, including the bootloader. At least it did on my machines.

Before you do that, go into your UEFI settings (From Windows 8: Charms bar -> Search -> Advanced Start Up. Click Troubleshoot then Find the option for entering UEFI, I forget the exact name, maybe PC Setup or Settings). Find if your flavor of UEFI has a Boot tab, and under that tab set the Windows as default delete all non Windows entries, save, and see if that works.

No. If you were using MBR method to boot there would still be Grub boot code there. If you were using UEFI, there is a separate partition which contains the boot files for windows and Linux on an EFI partition and nothing in the MBR. Which were you using? You might go to the site below and download and run the bootinfoscript and post the output here as it will provide a lot of detail on your system. You would need to run it from Linux so you could use the Fedora install medium.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript/

Thanks everyone for your help. I did as rtmistler suggested and used the windows full reset and it reset the bootloader, so I am now booting straight to windows. It was a UEFI system.