1

I'm trying desperately to uninstall Ubuntu 14.04 and replace it with Windows 7, but I'm encountering serious issues. See this thread: Trouble installing Windows 7 via USB

TL;DR I have a Windows 7 ISO on a USB that won't boot. BIOS doesn't recognize the USB. I have a second USB also with the ISO, and it recognizes it, but won't boot. I tried to see if a Ubuntu ISO will work, but that also has no effect. I'm taken to the grub screen, I select Try Ubuntu, there's a black screen, and then back to the grub. No purple background either.

I'm wondering if I can use boot-repair to wipe this HDD, then plug the USB in and install Windows. My concern is that I'll be in the same situation, but without the ability to boot into my computer any longer.

Here's what I have so far: My OS in use is on /sda2. I have an boot/EFI partition on sda1. Boot-Repair gives me the option to purge and reinstall the grub of /sda2. These are the commands:

sudo dpkg-configure-a
sudo apt-get install -fy
sudo apt-get purge-y-force-yes grub* shim-signed linux-signed*

The instructions ask:

Do you want to have all GRUB 2 files removed from /boot/grub?
Your system would then be unbootable if you don't install another bootloader.
Remove GRUB 2 from /boot/grub?

To my noob-ish mind, this sounds like the right course of action, considering literally nothing else that I've done has worked.

I've tried WinUSB, UnetBootin, Startup-Disk-Creator, when I encounter the black grub screen during boot, I changed the code to nomodetest and that didn't work, I changed the grubx64.efi to fallback.efi, etc. I'm backed up to a wall here. Any help would be great!

Community
  • 1
Hearthing
  • 43

2 Answers2

1

To answer the question in the title:

  • Can I Use Boot-Repair To Wipe My Computer?

    • No, you can't.

      See Misconception about boot-repair below.

Creating Windows UEFI media

With this question you are asking how you can install Windows 7 on your UEFI-capable computer, correct?

The commands you pasted look non-functional to me. I'm ignoring everything else in your question because that is irrelevant to installing Windows 7.

If you have a GPT partition table on the disk where you want to install Windows 7 in UEFI mode, the installer should be able to create the necessary partitions. You can use GParted in Ubuntu to manage or delete partitions and create partition tables. To create UEFI-bootable media have a look at this Q&A I posted: How to create UEFI-only bootable USB live media? (Yes, you can boot Windows 7 installation media in UEFI mode, I just checked my MSDN W7 x64 ISO and it contains .efi binaries. Yours should be the same, unless it was made by an ignorant haxx0r.)

This should get you back on track. If not, assume that your UEFI-capable computer has no operating system installed and you want to install Windows 7 with UEFI-booting from scratch. Ask for advice and instructions where Windows is on topic (superuser.com?)

Misconception about boot-repair

As far as I know boot-repair is a tool for restoring boot functionality to grub installations in case when these don't boot anymore and without asking much questions or doing a root cause analysis. "Wiping computers" seems to be out of scope for this tool.

Community
  • 1
LiveWireBT
  • 28,763
0

No, you cannot use Boot-Repair to wipe your computer. That tool cannot wipe any partition indeed, it is aimed at recovering access to operating systems.

To remove Ubuntu and replace it by Windows7, you just need to wipe your hard disk via Gparted (included in Ubuntu disc), then install Windows.

LovinBuntu
  • 3,615
  • 2
  • 20
  • 21