Ubuntu
grub package

All Gone Wrong

Asked by evenicoulddoit

Hi Guys,

I installed Ubuntu 7.04 on my machine, but I encountered a couple of major errors all of my own fault and I was wondering if you could help me rid of them.
I have a new Dell Vostro machine, and I ran the Ubuntu disk I burnt using the ISO file on the site. Now, I'm really sorry, but I didn't like such things as having to change resolution in a terminal, I simply just do not have the time to do things like that, so I attempted to uninstall it.

Now I'm quite a stupid retard, and I don't read things, but what I found out was that Ubuntu installed on my external HDD! It was set by default and so when I woke up at 7:40 in the morning set to go to work by 8, and got a GRUB Error: could not load grub, I was in sudden fear. It only then occured to me that maybe in my insane stupidness I had installed Ubuntu on my External HDD and had to plug it in to get my PC to boot at all.

Now I can load longhorn (vista) back up again via grub, but could someone possibly take me through the simplest action of uninstaling ubuntu off, well mainly I want to take it off the MDR which is vital, but then I'd like to know how to delete the partition it make on my External HDD that now thinks its 25GB large instead of 250GB

Many thanks all, sorry for my insane stupidity.

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Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said : 		#1

You don't uninstall an OS. You overwrite it. Use you vista CD and install over it or use the repair feature to rewrite the master boot record. You can also use the Ubuntu live CD and run gparted and delete partitions at will.

As for fixing resolution you don't need to do that in a terminal. The new version of Ubuntu (7.10) which will be release in a week has a new tool for adjusting graphics. Installing the proprietary driver for you graphics card will also make adjusting resolution easier. Even windows has problems with graphics if you don't install the driver.

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evenicoulddoit (ian-clark-001) said : 		#2

Hi,

Really what I'm desperately looking to do, is to stop GRUB's MBR from actually perceiving Ubuntu, so that I can boot my laptop w/o my external disk plugged in, then I can try to delete the partition.

Do you know how I could do this, I cannot get to the windows RE because it doesn't appear to be on the installation disk issued by Dell, I only have install windows vista.

Thanks,
Ian

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Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said : 		#3

You can't have grub on the internal MBR and then have the files grub needs on the external. It won't work. The files grub uses are part of the Ubuntu install. I would just set the internal drive back to being a normal windows drive and use the BIOS tools to boot off the external when you want to. Grub will be installed to the external drive. You will just need to use whatever tools your bios has to say during this boot use the external drive.

The vista CD should have a recovery option. Just boot it and follow the directions for recovery. At least I think that what it's called. If it isn't there you probably need to call Dell.

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