How can I remove vista from a ubuntu / vista dual boot!

TheOneSYM · 06-10-2008, 07:40 PM

Hey there. I recently installed ubuntu on a vista system, so now it is dual booting currently. I would like to remove vista from the system and regain all of that disk space for linux if possible. Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks.

wowihatevista · 06-10-2008, 09:32 PM

I would also like to know this... Ill be getting rid of vista very soon, cant wait!!!

jay73 · 06-10-2008, 10:21 PM

Couldn't be easier.
- install gparted from System > Admin > Synaptic
- close Synaptic
- select partition editor from System > Admin
- select the Vista partition and format (just that one!) to a linux file system (ext3 or xfs).
- add it to your /etc/fstab file, which is the list of partitions that can be used by Ubuntu/Linux. You open the fstab file for editing by running this command in the terminal (Accesories > terminal):

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

If gparted shows the (former) Vista partition as, say, sda1 you would add this to your fstab (at the bottom):

/dev/sda1 /home/username/Data ext3 relatime 0 2

This is assuming that you picked ext3 for a filesystem when you formatted the partition (substitute as required) and that you want the partition to appear inside a folder called "Data" inside your home directory (again you are free to choose a different filename or even a different location). Remember to create the "Data" folder before doing this. When you are done, open up a terminal and run

sudo mount -a (this mounts all the entries listed in fstab)

and then

sudo chmod -R username.username /home/username/Data

(this is required to make the folder fully accessible for both reading and writing).

Partitions can even be merged but as windows tends to occupy the first partition, it would be rather inconvenient in this case. You would have to move your root partition to the start of the drive first. Not difficult but you'd better know what you are doing. Unless, of course, you have only recently installed and you don't mind reinstalling. There is an option to make Ubuntu take over all of the drive, which would get vista overwritten.

ischi · 06-11-2008, 01:46 AM

And not to forget remove the vista entry from the bootmanager eg:

Code:

nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

and remove the lines for Vista eg

Code:

label=vista
rootnoverify=(hdx,x)
chainloader +1

TheOneSYM · 06-11-2008, 09:04 PM

thank you for your help. much appreciated!

gigsvoo · 06-24-2008, 04:19 AM

Hi there,

How about I want to move /boot partition into beginning of the drive, how can I do that?

My current list of /dev

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00095429

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       19477   156447480    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           19478       24321    38909430    5  Extended
/dev/sda5           19478       24116    37262736   83  Linux
/dev/sda6           24117       24321     1646631   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Thanks

jay73 · 06-24-2008, 11:31 AM

Quote:

How about I want to move /boot partition into beginning of the drive, how can I do that?

Do you mean just /boot or all of your / partition? I see only one linux partition so I assume all of /. In either case, you would have to copy the data from the Linux partition to the new one. The safe approach is to do so from a livecd or from another Linux OS (if you have more than one installed) or even a different computer.
Of course, your new partition (the NTFS one) should have a linux native file system before it can be used. You can use gparted to do so or even the command line.
Then mount both the original / partition and the new one. From a livecd, that would look something like:

Code:

sudo mkdir /mnt/from
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/from
sudo mkdir /mnt/to
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/to

I am using "sudo" throughout just out of habit; most livecds will let you run those commands without it.
Then copy the data:

Code:

cd /mnt/from
sudo cp -ax * /mnt/to/

This part is going to take some time.
When the prompt returns, you still have to edit your /etc/fstab file and your /boot/grub/menu.lst.

Code:

sudo gedit /mnt/from/etc/fstab

and

Code:

sudo gedit /mnt/from/boot/grub/menu.lst

Your / partition is now a different one so you should edit fstab in such a way that / points to the new partition (/dev/sda1) instead of the old one. The same goes for menu.lst.
Unmount both partitions and reboot. Do not delete the original / partition until you are sure that everything is OK. If there is a problem, you can edit your grub/menu.lst to make it point to the original / partition again. That way, you can keep using your system as it was while your are figuring out what went wrong.

amani · 06-24-2008, 11:42 AM

> How about I want to move /boot partition into beginning of the drive, how can I > do that?

Why do you want to do that?

There is no need to do that or move / to /sda1.

And you can install some other distro in /dev/sda1
Consider jfs instead of ext3 or xfs (a bit difficult on Linux).

Best

A. Mani

linbux · 06-24-2008, 12:40 PM

i think the simplest way is edit /boot/grub/menu.lst (in su mode by vi tool) and remove vista section from it.
and remove vista partition and replace it via and ext3 partition!
just this!
i believe linux made things easy!

haiyun211 · 05-28-2009, 11:21 PM

Hi guys I tried doing what you said and am now locked out of that partition. It would not let me do the chmod step.

anibal99 · 04-01-2010, 01:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jay73

Couldn't be easier.
- install gparted from System > Admin > Synaptic
- close Synaptic
- select partition editor from System > Admin
- select the Vista partition and format (just that one!) to a linux file system (ext3 or xfs).
- add it to your /etc/fstab file, which is the list of partitions that can be used by Ubuntu/Linux. You open the fstab file for editing by running this command in the terminal (Accesories > terminal):

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

If gparted shows the (former) Vista partition as, say, sda1 you would add this to your fstab (at the bottom):

/dev/sda1 /home/username/Data ext3 relatime 0 2

This is assuming that you picked ext3 for a filesystem when you formatted the partition (substitute as required) and that you want the partition to appear inside a folder called "Data" inside your home directory (again you are free to choose a different filename or even a different location). Remember to create the "Data" folder before doing this. When you are done, open up a terminal and run

sudo mount -a (this mounts all the entries listed in fstab)

and then

sudo chmod -R username.username /home/username/Data

(this is required to make the folder fully accessible for both reading and writing).

Hi,

I was on dualboot (VISTA + Ubuntu 9.10) and I followed above steps to remove VISTA from my PC (Acer Aspire REVO 36000). All went fine, I made sure Vista was removed from its partition until I rebooted...

Now I get the following message:
BOOTMGR IS MISSING (Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart)

Obviously I did not follow the steps detailed by ischi i.e. "And not to forget remove the vista entry from the bootmanager" basically because I'm a newby to Ubuntu and did not figured out how to do that.

Does anyone can help me out please? I invested close to a month to get familiar with Ubuntu 9.10, installing updates, soft, etc. and now it is properly finetuned I'm not looking into starting all over (the additional pain is that my PC has no optical drive).

Many thanks in advance and congrats to everyone that is contributing to Ubuntu project, it's really great!!