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I'm trying to get rid of Ubuntu 16.04 have tried already to download a windows ISO to make bootable USB . Ubuntu messed up the first pendrive already.

I have tried another options like diskmanager, formating usb pendrive, but it cannot be loaded after changing boot order, doesn't recognize the new OS.

I'm Struggling with this for days! Many things doesn't work from Ubuntu (software store, downloading files, executing files or installing other apps.

What can I do?

ankit7540
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Jhossett Amonk
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1 Answers1

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What's probably happening (I'm not a Windows expert) is that Windows is not happy with the label on your disk, and is refusing to erase your existing Ubuntu partitions.

Try booting Ubuntu from a CD or USB stick, as if you were installing. Once the live image is up, open a terminal, find which disk is your main disk (you don't want to accidentally erase your usb stick), and write zeros in the first few sectors:

To find all your disks:

ls -lR /dev/disk/

This will give you a list of various ways of accessing your disks; the output would look something like...

/dev/disk/by-partuuid:
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Apr  5 16:55 07790ee7-6756-4ac9-8e87-d69f2f944d25 -> ../../nvme0n1p3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Apr  5 16:55 1424ca57-733f-4a83-819e-c280170c3969 -> ../../nvme0n1p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Apr  5 16:55 934ed3f4-8552-43ac-9ebb-eaa9be78ecce -> ../../nvme0n1p4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Apr  5 16:55 a2578ac7-d50a-4fd0-8657-ae28cbbd30fa -> ../../nvme0n1p5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Apr  5 16:55 ce41bcf2-4f27-4f2d-abf1-3e5c1a79b74e -> ../../nvme0n1p2

(and other lines)

or...

/dev/disk/by-partuuid:
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Apr  5 16:55 07790ee7-6756-4ac9-8e87-d69f2f944d25 -> ../../nvme0n1p3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Apr  5 16:55 1424ca57-733f-4a83-819e-c280170c3969 -> ../../nvme0n1p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Apr  5 16:55 934ed3f4-8552-43ac-9ebb-eaa9be78ecce -> ../../nvme0n1p4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Apr  5 16:55 a2578ac7-d50a-4fd0-8657-ae28cbbd30fa -> ../../nvme0n1p5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Apr  5 16:55 ce41bcf2-4f27-4f2d-abf1-3e5c1a79b74e -> ../../nvme0n1p2

In the first example, I have one disk named /dev/nvme0n1; in the second example I have two disks, named /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. You see how this works. In your case, /dev/sda is likely to be your main disk and /dev/sdb is likely to be your USB stick, but don't take my word for it; check with:

$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
...

This shows me that /dev/sda is indeed may first disk. Now I can erase it:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1024k count=1

That will write a megabyte of zeroes starting at the beginning of the disk, obliterating all information about ubuntu (and anything else you might have on that disk).

Now you can install Windows cleanly.

JayEye
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