Installing Win7 and Removing Linux Partition

L Ron Howard

So it's computer upgrade time for me! Yay!
Unfortunately, I have a question here that the Google seems to be failing me to answer, and I hope this is a stupid easy question to answer.

I currently run dual boot with WinXP and Ubuntu. I, however, don't spend as much time any more in Linux, and just wish to get rid of it, and use the hard drive it's on as a single Win7 partition.

Will Win7 see that partition and allow me to destroy it? Or will I need to find the Ubuntu disk, and remove it that way, so that when I load the Win7 disk it will be able to create a whole partition?

rfalias

Yes it will.
Just like all other windows installs you can remove all existing partitions and combine them into a single and format it.

Joneswilliamsc

rfalias wrote: »

Yes it will.
Just like all other windows installs you can remove all existing partitions and combine them into a single and format it.

Up till now you have done it. I don't know but still I am replying you that I am agree with this man. You can do it. But you have to take care little bit in the partition. Because sometimes due to a minor mistake in the partition and the whole installation goes wrong.

Tofystedeth

Doing a Windows installation where you're knocking out the old partitions shouldn't run into any issues. It's not like you're using Gparted to resize one, or trying to preserve a partition or make sure Windows installs to the correct drive*.

If it's anything like the XP installer (I haven't run it, but from what I hear, it's not very much like it. Shouldn't matter for this case) on the screen where it asks you where you want to install it, it should show all the partitions on the drive. From there you can delete the partitions and format the whole drive as one NTFS partition.

*Speaking of which, if you have any other drives in that system, remove them before doing the install. Windows can sometimes be a little silly about installing to the wrong drive, or making the wrong drive the master. It just saves headaches to make sure that only your target installation drive is in the system at install time.

rfalias

It's actually a GUI, pretty easy to understand, much more so than 95-xp

L Ron Howard

The reason why I'm asking this question is because when I last ran the WinXP installer with the Linux partition, it said it was an unrecognized partition, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get rid of it. It just said something to the effect of "hey, I see there's a partition here, but it's unrecognized, so I'm not going to be able to touch it. Sorry."
But I'll give it a shot since it sounds like I won't have any issues destroying the partitions and completely redoing them.

ashridah

Even if you do run into trouble, if the linux partitions are after the windows ones on the disk, you can find a way to delete them later, and then enlarge the windows partitions using the disk management tools. If the linux partitions are at the start of the disk, however, then things get more complicated, afiak.