Ubuntu in parallel with Vista March 29, 2008

Back in January I decided to try Ubuntu in parallel with Vista, Vista being my main OS, and Ubuntu — the playground (aka sandbox).

As you might know, Linux uses completely different file system than NTFS — Vista’s native FS. And Ubuntu can create partitions with suitable file system automatically during its setup process. But it needs an unformatted partition in order to do that.

Fortunately, Vista allows creating and deleting partitions without any risk of data loss out-of-the-box, which means you don’t need tools like PartitionMagic anymore. So, I created two partitions for Linux — 20 GB for the OS itself, and another 5 GB for the page file.

During the installation, Ubuntu picked up these unformatted partitions and automatically formatted them and installed itself into them, changed the master boot record so that either Ubuntu or Vista can be booted, if neccessary.

Installation went fine, I played around with Ubuntu a bit and decided to uninstall it today.

So, I shredded the Linux partitions through Vista with couple of clicks and formatted them back to NTFS. But when I tried to restart my machine, it wouldn’t! Because, I also deleted the boot manager Ubuntu was using.

I quickly figured out that I have to fix the master boot record (MBR). I booted up from the Vista DVD, chose “Repair my computer” option there, opened up the command prompt and typed bootrec /fixboot and bootrec /fixmbr (Google rules!) and voila, Vista can boot without any problems once again!