bought a used laptop and need some help clearing out the grub loader

[dylanZ]

Hey guys, new here and need some Ubuntu related help.
I bought a laptop and I boot it up and there is around 5 versions of Ubuntu, a few memtests, and windows Vista and 7. I would like to dual-boot 7 and Ubuntu. I don't mind using Wubi. I guess I'm asking how to delete every OS on the grub except for 7. Please keep in mind that I am a complete Linux noob.
Thank you for your time.

[westie457]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Before telling you how to delete an operating system and possibly hosing it away. We do not want to do that.

Are you able to boot into any of the Ubuntu OS's?

If so start any of them, open a Browser and go to here. http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/

When you have the bootinfo.txt file attach it to a new reply here by clicking on the paperclip at the top of the message pane.

The file will give us more than enough information to best advise you.

Thank you

[dylanZ]

Thank you for the warm welcome.
I cannot boot any of the Ubuntu OS's. It says that it cannot find a certain file. I'm not for sure which one, I'm on my phone now. I can get the missing file name if it would help.

[westie457]

The name of that file would probably help. Once we sort that out we will more than likely hit the hurdle of the log in password.

We will take this one (small) step at a time.

Hope you are ready for a learning curve. From my point of view this will not be very easy for me however you might take to this like a duck to water.

I take it you are able to boot into one of the Windows installations which will be of use later.

[dylanZ]

I don't mind a challenge. I am not a complete computer noob so I'm not completely lost here. More of a code monkey though. The Vista OS is just some type of a backup/restore thing. I can boot into 7 just fine. I attached the pics of what Grub is showing. Oddly enough. I just tried to boot Ubuntu and it actually booted. The only problem is that I don't know the password for the Ubuntu account. I still want to whip the Ubuntus off and start fresh.

[Vaphell]

if you have a linux livecd/usb, boot it and run gparted to see the hdd configuration.
Linux stuff would occupy swap/extX partitions, windows would be NTFS/FAT. I think setting up fresh linux installation on top of existing ubuntu would do the trick (grub menu would be new).

During installation procedure you would have to select manual mode where you can get to the nitty gritty details. Explicitly assign swap to existing swap, root dir (/) to /.
Of course you can also wipe these existing linux partitions and split space according to your needs (separate /home? separate partition for user data?). Vista recovery probably can go away too, so you can expand useful partitions to occupy its space, but details will be known once you show

After installation the system should scan partitions in search for OSes to create fresh grub menu for them.

[dylanZ]

The funny thing about this laptop(netbook) is that it doesn't have a CD drive and for some reason, I don't have an option to boot from USB.

[twipley]

If you bought an used laptop, the only way to ascertain that it is malware-free is to install stuff yourself.

If you are up to it, I would suggest installing 7 afresh, then doing the same with Ubuntu. Linux should always be installed after, though.

[dylanZ]

I would rather not have to buy/pirate Windows 7. It's looks like a pretty clean install though. Also for some reason I cannot boot from a USB.

[Vaphell]

The funny thing about this laptop(netbook) is that it doesn't have a CD drive and for some reason, I don't have an option to boot from USB.

so how exactly did the previous owner install ubuntu? o.O
have you looked in bios? what Acer model is this?

I would rather not have to buy/pirate Windows 7.

isn't that win7 pirated either way?
Vista recovery suggests that win7 doesn't belong to the native configuration (unless there was an upgrade allowed)