Remove Linux

I want to ditch Linux and get back to Windows

How to make a dual-boot system just boot Windows.

If you have the Windows XP Install CD

1. Re-execute the Microsoft Windows® installation program, instructing it to "repair" the installation. The installer will rewrite the MBR (Master Boot Record) on the hard-drive so that Windows is loaded directly. Notice that this alone will not actually remove the Linux materials from your hard drive.

1. If you wish to completely eliminate Linux, you must also remove the disk partitions which now contain various parts of Linux, replacing them with partition-types that Windows recognizes and reformatting the areas appropriately.

If you don't have the Windows Install Media

First, back up critical Windows data, just in case. Using a Live CD like Puppy Linux, run Gparted, a graphical partition manager remove all the Linux partitions. Create a Linux new partition of 5MB, and format it to be completely empty. Select ext2 as file system type is fine. Re-grow the FAT or NTFS windows partition to re-claim the space from Linux.

The remaining command line instructions assume that that the new tiny Linux partition is named "/dev/hda3", that you've used the grub bootloader, and that the Puppy Linux LiveCD is being used.

mkdir /mnt/hda3
mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/hda3

# This shouldn't be necessary, but Puppy Linux 2.15CE had a bug to workaround
ln -s /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc /usr/lib/grub/i386-t2

# On Puppy I use "e3vi" as the editor, which works like vi
$EDITOR /mnt/hda3/boot/grub/menu.lst

# Now, remove or comment out the lines which don't apply to the Windows partition, and save the file. 

grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/hda3 /dev/hda3

Hopefully, that worked! Reboot and see what happens. :)