hi there! i have a problem...

i run windows 7 on my desktop comp, and i decided to install ubuntu to run alongside it. The problem is that i dont think i made a separate partition for it so it installed on my C drive!

So now all i want to do is uninstall ubuntu, but i dont know how...

I did not install ubuntu thru wubi (which maybe i should have done)

when i boot my computer it gives me a list of operating systems to run, with a 7 second timer that automatically opens ubuntu if nothing else is chosen. It has like a purplish background when it lists these options -

after a little bit of research i noticed that other people with similar problems have a 30 second timer on the list with a black background, which is different to what i see!

i have downloaded easybcd and it does not locate ubuntu at all, and there is no option to uninstall ubuntu thru control panel -> add/remove progs.

Not sure what to do, the last thing i want to do is have to reformat my comp. any suggestions? plz let me know if there are any other details that i have missed!

thanks for reading!
chem

You really need to figure out what you did, not guess.

Inside Ubuntu, you can use an fdisk command to see all the partitions and find out exactly what you did. I think that command isYou may need to copy/paste the output of that into a post so someone can explain it to you.

You are being very uninformative there. Was Windows one of the choices on that menu? If you select Windows does it work?

If Windows works, then you need to repair the Windows MBR and then delete the Linux partitions. All of that can be done easily from inside Windows. After that, you probably want to expand the Windows partition or create a Windows data partition to use the space you deleted Linux from.

If Windows doesn't work, you probably destroyed it and need to reinstall.

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thanks so much for your timely response johnsfine!!

ok so im 90% sure i installed ubuntu onto my C drive without making a separate partition.. It was done a few months ago and then i just kind of forgot about it so i cannot remember the exact details.. so sorry for this! I had windows 7 running originally.

Both operating systems are working completely fine, however i use windows much more often.

This is the boot option list i get when starting up:

Ubuntu, with linux 3.0.0-17 generic
Ubuntu, with linux 3.0.0-17 generic (recovery mode )
Previous linux versions
Memory test (memtest86+)
Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)
Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda2)

I get a 7 second timer to choose...


the results i got from the fdisk command u mentioned:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = secors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk Identifier: 0xc8000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System
/dev/sda1 2048 31600639 15799296 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 * 31602688 976771071 472584192 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT


Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = secors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk Identifier: 0x43546435

Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System
/dev/sdb1 2048 906211269 453104611 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2 906211326 976771071 35279873 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 906211328 968519679 31154176 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 968521728 976771071 4124672 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Not entirely sure what any of this means. The Hard drive its installed on is 500GB without any partitions. Hope this helps!

Plz let me know if theres anything more u need from me, and thank you so much!

But the information you posted says otherwise.

It very much implies the question: What does Windows see on the D: partition?

Did you retype all that? (You don't know how to copy/paste in Linux into a browser accessing this forum?)
It looked like it had at least one typo, so I'm not sure what to trust.


It means you have a second 500GB hard drive. It means that while installing Linux, you reduced the size of a Windows partition on the second hard drive and installed Linux into new partitions there.

My guess from looking at this is you once had a single Windows partition C: mirrored on two physical drives. The Linux installer did not recognize the Windows fake RAID, so it modified the two drives independently, installing most of itself on the second drive, but installing into the MBR of the first drive.

If you're lucky, Windows then recognized the RAID was broken and continued operating on just the first physical drive. If that is correct then on D: Windows will see a frozen copy of what had been on C: before you installed Linux.

If you're unlucky, then Windows has been using a broken RAID ever since and gradually corrupting things.

Or maybe I'm guessing entirely wrong and you never had a RAID and D: is something else entirely.

Before fixing anything you need to verify what D: is.

But I'm not really even certain D: is the right name for the partition that needs explanation. In Linux that is sdb1. In Windows it might be D: or E: or maybe something else.

If you never had a RAID, or if Windows understands the RAID is broken and you don't want to repair the RAID, then my original advice remains correct. You need to repair the MBR in Windows and then verify Windows boots directly (without the Linux boot menu appearing first). Then you can use the Windows disk management software to clean the Linux stuff off of the second drive and reuse that space for data.

But if you want to repair the RAID, that gets a lot more specific based on details of what brand computer you have, what BIOS you have and what type of fake RAID you have. It still starts with repairing the Windows MBR.

Your C: partition is the thing listed by fdisk as sda2.
You have a recovery partition listed by fdisk as sda1. There is a BIOS hot key (One of the F buttons, but I don't know which one) that will boot into the recover partition. Many recovery partitions when booted start by fixing the MBR for Windows without even asking if you want to. That might be a good way to fix this, but I prefer having more control, so I would find a program for fixing the MBR and run that inside Windows itself.

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Most Windows 7 instructions I found for repairing the MBR tell you to find the program bootrec.exe and use the command
bootrec /fixmbr

But bootrec is a Microsoft program that apparently is not legally offered for download anywhere.

There is a copy on the Windows 7 install DVD. But most people with Windows 7 don't have the DVD.
There is a copy in your recovery partition (sda1), but that might be hard to get to from either Windows or the BIOS. A competent Linux user could probably mount both sda1 and sda2 and find bootrec.exe on sda1 and copy it somewhere on sda2 (which is your C:). Then reboot into Windows and use it from C:
Because of the simplicity of the program combined with the legal restrictions on offering it, many people have just rewritten equivalent programs from scratch. They are easy to find. But I don't know how you would know which you can trust. The first one I found (again no comment on whether I would trust it) is
http://download.cnet.com/MbrFix/3000...-10485990.html

thanks for your reply.

my computer has 2 hard drives, both 500GB, but were not RAID so they acted separately - windows installed on C:

i think i was wrong earlier when i said i installed ubuntu on that same drive - thru windows disk management it shows an extra partition on D: so im guessing i installed it there. i cannot apologize enough for wasting your time!!

I wanted it to be installed on the D: as i thought it was on the C: - but it looks like it was installed on the correct drive from the beginning.. no need to uninstall ubuntu after all.

So now im a little bit embarrassed. thanks for helping me still, your time and effort is much appreciated!

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1) If you don't want to uninstall Linux, you probably want to change the default so the OS you use more often (Windows) boots by default. The timeout length and which OS boots by default is completely under your control. Read some GRUB documentation. It really isn't difficult.

2) You should understand C: and D: are not drives. They are partitions. As you can see in the picture you posted, you have a recovery partition and a C: partition on drive 0. You have D: and the Linux root partition and the Linux swap partition on drive 1.

I don't know why Linux claims its two partitions are "logical" partitions, while Windows claims those two are "primary". That shouldn't disagree, but it doesn't really matter until/unless you decide to shrink some partitions to make room for more.

Windows shows two extra partitions on the same drive as the D: partition.
I hope you understand Linux is not installed inside D:
Linux is installed outside D: on the same drive as D:

I always assume a beginner might have misunderstood his situation and asked the wrong question. Helping more often means getting a beginner to discover the actual situation, rather than answering the original question. I'm glad that worked well this time.