Linux Mint Forums

Hello, this may be a stupid question, as I'm new to linux, but here's my situation.
I am using an Acer w500 tablet which normally runs windows, I recently installed Linux Mint 13 KDE over it, as windows was running a bit slow. I have recently decided to re-install windows 7 as the sole operating system for the time being. I have the recovery disks for windows 7, but whenever I boot and run it, it tells me that I don't have enough space for the temporary files. So, my question is, how do I install Windows 7 as the sole operating system over Linux Mint 13 KDE? Do I need to re-install Linux and create a new partition? If so, exactly how do I do create said partition so that windows can use it?
Thanks!

Depends. Suggest you boot from the Linux Mint installation DVD / USB and run GParted. Using that, check that you didn't delete your Windows recovery partition. If it is still there, go ahead and remove the Linux Mint partitions (the ext4 and linux swap ones). Hopefully that should allow you to recover Windows again. If you deleted the recovery partition, I'm not sure how you should Windows again as laptops / tablets generally don't come with a medium to reinstall Windows.

Thanks for the quick reply!
The partitions showing are...
/dev/sda1 ext4 28gb
/dev/sda2 extended 1.6gb
/dev/sda5 linuxswap 1.6gb

So, it looks like it overwrote the Windows Recovery when I installed Linux Does that mean that even with the recovery disks I won't be able to install Windows?
If not, I may have an XP or spare Windows 7 installation disk around, would those work?

n4arsonist wrote:Thanks for the quick reply!
The partitions showing are...
/dev/sda1 ext4 28gb
/dev/sda2 extended 1.6gb
/dev/sda5 linuxswap 1.6gb

So, it looks like it overwrote the Windows Recovery when I installed Linux Does that mean that even with the recovery disks I won't be able to install Windows?
If not, I may have an XP or spare Windows 7 installation disk around, would those work?

It seems during your last installation of Linux OS you had chosen to let the installer took over the whole hard disk.

Now that you want to reinstall Windows OS, the first thing to do is to save any files in Linux OS you wish to keep.
Then, boot and run from Live DVD/CD, run gparted, delete all the three linux partitions, when you do so the whole hard disk become unallocated space.

Next is to boot with Windows OS CD, it will see all the space which are unallocated, and follow windows OS installation procedure.

Alright, using gparted booted from the Live USB, I was able to delete the first partition, /dev/sda1 freeing up about 28gb. However, I can't delete the other two, as they are marked locked. When I try to it says that one partition needs to be mounted, so I am unable to umount or delete them. I went ahead and tried the recovery cd with just the first partition deleted, which is now marked as "unallocated", but ran into the same problem.

Hello, n4arsonist.

Linux, including the live system, will see and use the swap device. Therefore you will have to turn it off. Then you will be able to remove /dev/sda5 and finally /dev/sda2. should turn swapping off.

Kind regards,
Karl

If you have a copy of the windows 7 install disk, not the recovery disks, you can just delete all the partitions and make new ones using fdisk while you are booted into the windows installation environment. You have to use the command line to do it. Just remember that the dos command prompt is weird after you have gotten used to BASH/linux.

Again, thank you guys so much for all the help and quick replies.
I was able to delete the remaining partitions and use the recovery cd, everything went fine until I rebooted, whereupon it gives me the error,
"Error: unknown filesystem."
grub rescue>

Any ideas?

n4arsonist wrote:Again, thank you guys so much for all the help and quick replies.
I was able to delete the remaining partitions and use the recovery cd, everything went fine until I rebooted, whereupon it gives me the error,
"Error: unknown filesystem."
grub rescue>

Any ideas?

Well, something is amiss on your recovery disk and re-installation of Win7.
Usually win7 will overwrite MBR and make it bootable.

Your error message
grub rescue>

indicates that MBR is still with Linux's boot loader grub.
so your win7 recovery disks somehow did not install windows boot manager onto MBR, that is quite unusual.
something is not right on your recovery disks.

Nevermind, if you still cannot get win7 to install its own boot loader,
and if your win7 installation is really complete , but just missing boot loader,
you can try a quick trick , that is to install Lilo onto MBR.

The method to fix the MBR is:
1. Boot the machine using the Linux Live USB/CD.
2. Install lilo

sudo apt-get install lilo

3. Fix the MBR using lilo using the command:

sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr

4. reboot, and hope for the best.
good luck

It worked! I'm running Windows 7 seemingly flawlessly.
Thanks a bunch guys!