System: Dell Inspiron Mini 1011, Windows 7 Starter Edition
Q: I installed Ubuntu 10.10 alongside Windows 7 through a download. Though it ran OK it wouldn’t enable the Wi-Fi network. Hence I could not browse the Net using Linux. I tried several people and searched Ubuntu forums but couldn’t get it to work. Eventually I decided to uninstall it. I read from the answers on a forum which said to open Control Panel/ Disk Management/ Delete Volumes. I did in this method but then the system would not open. I get an error message reading NO SUCH PARTITION, GRUB RESCUE. I do not know how to come out of this fault. Can you tell me how to get back my partition and Windows 7?
A: In deleting the disk volume you’ve corrupted the master boot record. What you should have done – assuming you installed Ubuntu via WUBI – was to simply uninstall it from the Windows Control Panel. If you’re able to boot from a Linux live CD – it doesn’t necessarily need to be Ubuntu – open a command console and type the following two commands:
sudo apt-get install lilo
sudo lilo –m /dev/sda mbr
This should restore the master boot record and allow Windows to boot (more detailed instructions on this are available at the Ubuntu forums). However, since this is a netbook you probably don’t have a bootable CD drive, in which case you’ll need to reset the machine to its factory status from the Dell recovery partition. Switch on the computer, as soon as you see the blue bar with www.dell.com appear at the top of the screen press Ctrl+F11 and follow the prompts to restore the system. This will get you a working machine but will wipe out any user data you had on the disk.
Modern Linux distros often allow you to install inside Windows making removal easier
Originally featured in PCU 138
