18.04.1 how remove win10

**Kris_M** · August 27th, 2018

copy of post i just put in TN
"I need to be able to boot win7 directly. How do I do that. I can change the default between the 2, and I can reduce time to 0 to make it "look" like I'm going directly to 7, but it still is going through 10. Put another way, I want to be able to delete win10, which was not updated from win7 but was built from an 1803 iso..
I had win7. I added win10 as another partition and it set it up so that I could boot to either, but it has to go to win10 first. Need to eliminate that. (1803) EasyBCD doesn't help because the BCD remains on the win10 partition."

Got Ubuntu and win7 and win10. Now I know If i delete the partition I will hose everything because fstab just can't cope. I'll deal wth that later.

To boot to win7 I have to choose win10 in grub, chose 7 in windows choice window, and there I am.
If I format the win10 partition, grub will only recognize 7, but will not boot to is as win asks me to recover it, and i am unable to. It asks for drivers pretending it can't access my ssd.

I supose I could just dump 7 and 10 and rebuild 7 as I think it is a retail key. Then my only problem would be to figure out how to get Ubuntu to boot after I delete one partition and re-install the other one... hmmmmmmmmmmm

**oldfred** · August 27th, 2018

Moved to Windows sub-forum since Windows issues.

You can have grub boot either Windows if both are installed to primary partitions.
But if removing Windows 10 partition, you have to reinstall/repair the Windows 7 install. The Windows 10 replaced the Windows 7 boot files in the Windows boot partition. windows only boots from the one partition with the boot flag.With Windows 7 & later that is most often a separate 100MB boot partition.

Post this:
sudo parted -l
Or if you want lots of details to understand boot configuration, but it does not parse Windows BCD:
Just run the summary report, the auto fix sometimes can create more issues.
Boot Repair -Also handles LVM, GPT, separate /boot and UEFI dual boot, only use ppa download into Ubuntu live installer.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

To understand BIOS boot.

Multibooters, Pictures here worth 1000+ words Older Windows but same for all BIOS versions.
http://www.multibooters.co.uk/multiboot.html
http://www.multibooters.com/guides/v...-sequence.html

**Kris_M** · August 27th, 2018

thanks for your time!
Yes, both are on primary partitions.
The first link is down so I'll look at it in the morning.
win7 is on sda2 and win10 is on sda1,3

I backed it up with macrium and have been trying a bunch of different ways w/o success.
I am unable to repair sda2 - just gives me an error message. Tried a bunch of times w 2 different win7 sticks.
I can format win10 and change the default to win7, but in grub, clicking on win7/sda2 wants a repair. if I format sda1 (system partition), I still have to click on "win10 in grub and it puts me to win7.
it would be nice if I could repair win7/sda2 - any ideas?
I tried to install win7 but it errors out on a missing cdrom driver so I put a question over on the Lenovo forums.

Code:

kris@deepthought4L:~$ sudo parted -l
[sudo] password for kris: 
Model: ATA Samsung SSD 840 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
 1      32.3kB  90.5MB  90.4MB  primary   ntfs         boot
 2      2180MB  53.4GB  51.2GB  primary   ntfs
 3      53.4GB  105GB   51.6GB  primary   ntfs
 4      105GB   250GB   145GB   extended               lba
 5      105GB   142GB   36.7GB  logical   ext4
 6      142GB   174GB   32.0GB  logical   ntfs
 7      174GB   212GB   38.4GB  logical   ntfs
 8      212GB   250GB   38.0GB  logical   ntfs


Model: ST2000DM 006-2DM164 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name    Flags
 1      1049kB  1004GB  1004GB  ntfs         ext2T   msftdata
 2      1004GB  2000GB  996GB   ext4         WORK2T


kris@deepthought4L:~$ blkid
kris@deepthought4L:~$ sudo blkid
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop1: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop2: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop3: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop4: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop5: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop6: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop7: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/sda1: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="01D39A2A779DA380" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="5a710dc3-01"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="win7" UUID="01D39D1B0C4E1D00" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="5a710dc3-02"
/dev/sda3: LABEL="WIN10" UUID="38C8AB53C8AB0E66" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="5a710dc3-03"
/dev/sda5: UUID="87fcb7d8-230c-4c88-9b56-b08bf0a33836" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="5a710dc3-05"
/dev/sda6: LABEL="NWN1and2" UUID="01D39A2B9FD9D200" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="5a710dc3-06"
/dev/sda7: LABEL="E" UUID="01D39A2F84B0B530" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="5a710dc3-07"
/dev/sda8: LABEL="PHONES" UUID="01D39A307F188F20" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="5a710dc3-08"
/dev/loop8: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop9: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop10: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop11: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop12: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/loop13: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/sdc1: LABEL="ext2T" UUID="310EF8167A06B341" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="ext2T" PARTUUID="ced4d167-1327-4fc7-95c6-4c73e6c91592"
/dev/sdc2: UUID="121711ef-f46b-410a-9177-09c310128516" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="WORK2T" PARTUUID="be684b7e-693d-4332-9e3b-b58f032c327f"
kris@deepthought4L:~$

**Kris_M** · August 27th, 2018

Lenovo suggested putting win7 usb stick in USB2 instead of 3 - I wonder if that might fix the repair? I'll try tomorrow - it's late. Thanks!

**Kris_M** · August 27th, 2018

the repair did not throw an error, but it did not repair sda2.

**westie457** · August 27th, 2018

Boot your Win 7 install media and click install now.
At the Disk layout window delete the Win 10 partition. Leave the space blank.
Cancel the installation and reboot the Win 7 install media again.
This time click Repair my computer. Go to advanced options and open a command prompt.

Code:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd
exit

Restart the computer hopefully straight to Win 7. Optional here, reclaim the free space of the Win 10 partition back to Win 7.
If all successful reboot using Ubuntu install media and run Boot Repair to reinstall Grub.
Again if successful you should now be dual booting Win7 and Ubuntu.

**yancek** · August 27th, 2018

The behavior you are describing is standard and expected behavior with windows. As explained by oldfred above, a new install of windows will overwrite the boot files of the previous windows instal and create a menu entry for itself and the previous install. When you installed Ubuntu, Grub detected the windows boot files (which are now all windows 10) and that is why you can only get to 7 from 10. You can't change/fix this with Grub or Linux or boot repiar, it is windows only.

I would suggest you try the suggestion above by westie457 first and if that does not work, you need to go to either the microsoft support site or a windows forum.

**Kris_M** · August 27th, 2018

The amazing thing to me in all this is that I have not lost or offended Ubuntu in any way.

Yes, @yancek, this is normal and expected behaviour for windows. i did ask there with no expectations of an answer.

@westie457, I had tried formatting the win10 partition which gave me results where I could boot into win7 by going to the grub win10 link.
I tried your suggestion but when I got to booting the Ubuntu libe stick, I chose "try" but did not know how to "run boot repair there" so I did what I have been doing and used rescatux and just reinstalled grub. This time however, perhaps because of your commands, when I boot to win10 I go straight to win7. The win7 link still throws an error.

HOWEVER, I think this is quite workable and preferable to re-installing/rebuilding win7. i can simply use grub customizer to rename the win10 link and delete the win7 one. That will work for me. After all I do not use win7 much and was only using it for my old games which I was able to quickly put on ubuntu with wine and dosbox, and they work just fine. I like to keep a win around for things like flashing roms on my phones, though i will try that on ubuntu the next time the occasion arrises. just need adb and I think I did that before. Google is my friend!

SOoooooooo I am going to call this solved, and a huge thank you to @westie457 !!!

**westie457** · August 27th, 2018

I think if you had booted the win 7 install media and run those commands as suggested then all traces of win 10 would have been removed because older windows installations cannot recognize newer ones.
Maybe I should have posted the link to boot repair, apologies for not doing that.
Boot repair is quite capable of restoring a windows boot while using a msdos partition scheme with MBR, not too sure how it handles UEFI.
Anyway glad it worked sufficiently for you.

**Kris_M** · August 27th, 2018

Originally Posted by westie457

I think if you had booted the win 7 install media and run those commands as suggested then all traces of win 10 would have been removed because older windows installations cannot recognize newer ones.
Maybe I should have posted the link to boot repair, apologies for not doing that.
Boot repair is quite capable of restoring a windows boot while using a msdos partition scheme with MBR, not too sure how it handles UEFI.
Anyway glad it worked sufficiently for you.

Yes, I agree, I would have thought that, but it's not - maybe it's in the system partition, though I think when I delete that I lose win7 but I can't remember, I did it a couple times. I could do that as a test, though I'm having trouble backing up at the moment - macrium is giving me errors on verify so I need to figure that out before I test more.