Most of us are dual booting operating system in our computers, means installing two operating systems in separate partition instead of using VMware or VirtualBox. Mostly people installs Linux-Windows combination in dual boot system. And always messes up during uninstalling either one of this OS from their system. In this article we will show you how to uninstall Linux or Windows from dual boot system.
Most of the users use Windows version of OS in their systems, but there are some nerds who want both Linux and Windows. And after a couple of months, some of them wanted to switch to a single operating system, either Linux or Windows and most of them always break their boot sequence while uninstalling Linux or Windows. For those guys this tutorial will help, actually uninstall Linux or Windows from dual boot system is not that difficult. So let’s start :
Uninstall Linux And Keep Windows:
First method for those who wants to stick on regular Windows version and like to uninstall Linux OS from their system.
- First go to “Start Menu” and search for “Disk Management” and open up the Disk Management tool or you can simply hit “Windows key + R” to open Run dialogue box and type “diskmgmt.msc” to open Disk Management tool.
- Next find out your Linux partition. It won’t be labeled since Windows doesn’t understand the Linux file system, so you’ll need to figure out which one it is by size and where it is on your hard drive.
- Before moving to next step make sure you choose right partition. Now right click on Linux partition and choose “Delete Volume“. This will delete the partition from your hard drive, leaving free space.
- Now you can see the deleted partition in green color labeling “Free Space“. Next, locate the Windows partition near the newly available free space, right-click it, and select Extend Volume. Extend the partition so that it takes up all of the available free space. Any free space on your hard drive will remain unusable until you assign it to a partition.
- Yes you uninstall Linux from your system but its boot loader persists. So insert your Windows recovery media and boot from it. Choose “Repair Your Computer” go to “Troubleshoot” and then enter into Command Prompt. Type the following command:
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
- And this will remove or uninstall Linux bootloader and replace it with Windows.
- Reboot your computer and you should find that it boots directly into Windows, with no Linux partition to be found.
Uninstall Windows And Keep Linux:
This one is for those nerds who like to be a full-time Linux user or who hate Microsoft and their spying paid operating system. Mostly process varies with distros but the common method as follows :
- Insert a live CD or USB for your Linux distribution and start up its partition manager (like Gparted). Find your Windows partition in Gparted’s menu—it’ll be listed as an NTFS drive.
- Right-click on that Windows partition and choose “Delete” from the menu. Your machine may have other Windows-related partitions as well, like “System Reserved” and recovery partitions. If you want, you can delete these as well (but make sure you have recovery discs handy if you’re going to delete a recovery partition).
- Right-click on your Linux partition and choose “Resize/Move“. Resize it so it takes up the rest of the now-free space on your drive.
- Click the “Apply All Operations” button in the toolbar to perform the selected tasks. It may give you a warning saying that your computer may not boot, but with most Linux installations this shouldn’t be a problem (though if it is, check out this article to fix it). This process may take some time, so let it be!
- When it finishes, you should have a hard drive with nothing but Linux on it. Your boot menu will still have some Windows entries, and it’ll work fine if you leave them there, but if you want to clean things up, just open up a Terminal in Linux and run:
sudo update-grub
to remove them.
So this is how to uninstall Linux or Windows from dual boot system. If you are stuck during any process feel free to seek out our help by commenting below.
thank you…successfully uninstalled Linux mint from my system….
happy to help you
Yes as you said by deleting partition I uninstalled ubuntu linux but when I restart my pc, its showing GRUB RESCUE and can’t find an option to launch command prompt. please help
You must need Windows recovery media to launch Command prompt after uninstalling Linux.
First insert your recover media, it may be a CD or usb flash drive.
Then restart your pc
Then go to “Troubleshoot”
Then Advance options
There you can see Command prompt.
I’m facing a similar problem, I had one doubt:
When I made Windows recovery media, I had Win8 on my PC. So my recovery media is now having Win8 in it, but I’ve now irreversibly updated my PC to Win10.
Now, there is a pretty good chance that the boot loader in my recovery media will be outdated.
My doubt is that if I try to recover my boot loader using this recovery media, will this still work? Won’t Win10 require an updated boot loader? Or am I thinking about this the wrong way? Kindly guide me.
I wish I had known about your site before. I tried to remove Elementary OS from a dual
boot system (Windows 7 ultimate). Then my Windows 7 went kaput. I had to reinstall
the system Now I have peculiar problem. When I use any Live CD of Linux OS the CD
boots and I am able to try the OS. On the other hand when I try to use rescue CDs
like Hiren’s Boot CD, the start page opens. Then the computer freezes. The only
way to get out is to press the RESET button after removing the CD. Funnily some
CDs like AVG rescue CD, Mint or Aoemi partition manager CDs they boot and work well.
G parted CD also freezes the computer.
What is the reason for this? And how do I get over the problem?
I thought it might be Windows system problem and using Command.exe ran system
file check. Reports system ok except for some files which could not be repaired.
Ran disk check to see if there are any bad blocks or sectors. Disc reported to be
in good condition.
What those corrupted files are I do not know . Obviously they are not boot manager
files as the system opens and works normally.
Can you help and guide how to get rid of this problem.
Another thing. The same problem occurs even when I try to boot from USB using
a pen drive created with RUFUS.
My own problem is that am stuck on Linux, there’s no way I can get to windows to delete Linux partition. Please if there’s any way I can have access to windows. Help
Did you first try to repair GRUB by running “os-prober
update-grub”?
Windows shows but it won’t load rather it gives me a command prompt to input a command as follows :
Loading DRMK V8. 00…
DRMK Version 8.00
COMMAND. COM Build 37 – Jul 28, 2008
DRMK KERNEL Build 15 – Aug 8, 2008
Copyright © 2006-2008 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
C:\>:
Please assist me
Did you run Windows installation media after deleting Kali partition or you simply restart your computer?
I have restarted my pc several times but I have not deleted kali Linux yet.
And kali is still working perfectly.
But I still need access to windows to get my files. Thanks dude!
My situation: system is an HP envy laptop that came with Win 10 installed. I recently installed Manjaro Linux in dual-boot setup, but the system was unusable due toi interference from MS and HP software. So, I havr now installed Manjaro as the only OS, clearing the disk (SSD) with gparted beforehand. Now the system will not boot using grub, but WILL boot from the system setup–i.e. “BIOS” menu–but only by invoking the Windows bootloader. How caan I get rid of this so the system boots normally?
TYIA
I have done all steps but in boot manager I find windows boot manager and ubuntu .Is it not completely removed?
Then OS is still there, try again.