I had ubuntu installed on my Surface Pro 1 on a 32gb micro sd card. I ended up not using ubuntu too much on this machine, as i do all my power user processes on my desktop running ubuntu, and windows is better suited for my case in this being a tablet as well as a laptop. So I booted off a windows installer USB, went into repair my computer, and dropped into the command line. I executed the command bootrec.exe /fixmbr which it returned that the operation was completed successfully. So i exit the command line, click the turn off pc button, boot back up and grub is still there. I just type exit and it will boot strait to windows but its pretty annoying having it on here. Note during ubuntu installation everything was set to install on the sd card, and not on the internal storage occupied by windows. Note I do not have the sd card with ubuntu in the system anymore. Disk management reports the normal partitions on the drive(450mb recovery, 100mb EFI, and the 119gb primary partition). I guess I could restore from a backup if nothing else but I would much rather just remove it. Thanks!
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What version of Windows and I will try to update my answer with some steps – John Orion May 02 '16 at 23:30
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1If UEFI system and Ubuntu was UEFI, you have to remove /EFI/ubuntu folder from ESP & entry in UEFI's NVRAM. http://askubuntu.com/questions/63610/how-do-i-remove-ubuntu-in-the-bios-boot-menu – oldfred May 02 '16 at 23:33
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Windows 10 64bit – Ethan Hall May 02 '16 at 23:42
2 Answers
The simplest way of getting Windows back as the only OS on the system would be to run a Windows install disc for your version or Repair disk ... If it is windows 10 you would select repair then troubleshoot then startup repair and that will restore the Windows Boot loader. The steps are basically the same for Windows 8/8.1 and 7 but off hand I don't know the actual steps to get to the startup repair in those OS's .. it should be easy enough to find though
If worse comes to worse and you want a real easy way.. I can set you up so that Windows is the default boot and with no menu delay so basically it will boot right into Windows and you wouldn't see Grub at all but it would still be there
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When performing startup repair it gives me the error that it is unable to repair my system. It pointed me to the crash dump log where it said that the operating system version is incompatible with startup repair. Not sure why it is saying this... – Ethan Hall May 02 '16 at 23:54
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lol .. you are unlucky .. i have had great success with the Windows 10 start up repair .. oh well ... you can try THIS to deal with the EFI – John Orion May 03 '16 at 00:03
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Well I did that and it would have probably work great, but something happened and it corrupted the windows files. Well i was planning on restoring from the backup anyway so not sucha big deal. thanks for your help! – Ethan Hall May 03 '16 at 00:26
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Glad you had a backup, sorry we couldn't have made it easier for you. Good luck on your restore – John Orion May 03 '16 at 00:28
In windows or using a "windows recovery USB" access cmd.exe (command prompt) as admin (in restore media it will already be admin)
Type diskpart then press Enter
Type list vol then press Enter
Type sel vol and enter the number where the EFI vol is (it will be a FAT32 fs around 100mb so for example sel vol 2) press Enter
Type assign letter=Z:(or a letter you know is unassigned Z will probably be fine) press Enter
Type exit and press Enter
Type cd /d Z: press Enter this will give you access to Z:>
Type dir press Enter you should see an EFI directory
Type cd EFI press Enter
Type dir press Enter you should see boot, Microsoft Ubuntu etc
Type rmdir /s ubuntu press Enter
accept with y
exit/reboot job done
And it now should boot straight to windows without the bash grub also it doesn't matter about removing the Ubuntu from UEFI boot order because its not necessary on a surface pro tablet as the vol down and power on button prioritises the USB bootable source
