REMOVING WINDOWS 7 FROM A DUAL-BOOT SETUP (LINUX MINT & WINDOWS 7)
This small how-to will explain some steps on how to remove Windows 7 from your computer, and resize Linux Mint so that it uses the space that Windows 7 used to use. To do this we will use a excellent partitioning program called Gparted.
Note
You will need a LiveCD of Linux Mint for this tutorial.
Remember to backup any files you want to keep from Windows 7. I recommend backing up to a usb pen drive or external hard drive.
I refer to screenshots during the how-to, which can be found at the bottom of the how-to.
My partitons may be different than yours so just adapt this how-to to apply to your partitons.
Now to get started
**STEP 1 -
Boot up into the Livecd of Linux Mint, after it has loaded enter
Gparted into the filter textbox of the Mint Menu. Then click on Gparted from the menu.
After Gparted has loaded, you will see a list of all the partitons on your computer.
Look at the
1st screenshot, it is a screenshot of the partitions on my computer. I currently have LM9 (sda6 & sda5) in its own partition (sda1) then I have two partitions Windows 7 created (sda2 & sda3). For this how-to i have based it on my own partitions, note that the names/sizes and layout of your partitions may be different.
**STEP 2 (Deleting Windows 7) -
To delete windows 7 right click on its partitions and click delete. The windows 7 partitons will be the NTFS partitons if your not sure. You should now see 2 operations listed at the bottom of Gparted. Look at the
2nd screenshot to see how mine looks after I have told Gparted I want it to delete the Windows 7 partitions.
Note that Gparted wont actually perform these operations until we tell it to. It may look like on Gparted that the Windows 7 partitions have now gone but there still there.
**STEP 3 (Resizing Linux Mint and moving swap partition) -
If you look at the
1st screenshot I have Linux Mint's partition(sda6) and its swap partition(sda5) within a partition(sda1). This means that both these partitions are limited by the overall size of the partiton their in(sda1). So I will need to resize the sda1 partition to use all of the remaining free space.
If you dont have the Linux mint partition and swap in a partition then you wont need to do. If so skip down to the sentence that starts with ##
To resize the partition right click on it and click 'resize/move'. Drag the right arrow of the partition all the way to the right.
Once you have done this click the 'resize/move' partition.
## Now we have to move the swap partition over to the end of the partition or hard drive. Right click on the swap partition and click 'resize/move' now drag and move the coloured box with the two arrows all the way to the right. Just like i have done in
screenshot 3. Then click the 'resize/move' button.
Now we can resize the Linux Mint partition, right click it and click 'resize/move' then drag the right arrow to the right as far as you can then click the 'resize/move' button. Just like i have done in
screenshot 4.
If you look at the
5th screenshot you can see that the partitions are all setup completely now and the operations are ready to be started (ignore the unallocated 2mb space in my screenshot)
**STEP 4 (Checking & Applying Operations) -
Check now that you are satisfied with how the partitions are now setup and the operations that Gparted will perform. We can now tell Gparted to perform the operations by clicking the green arrow within Gparted.
Note it may take 5 or 10mins or even longer for the operations to be completed, depending on how you have chosen to setup the partitions.
You will know that Gparted has finished becuase it will display 'All operations finished'.
Now we can Exit gparted and reboot the computer.
You should now have successfully removed Windows 7 from your computer and Linux Mint is now able to use all the space you have giving it.
Job done
Below is a additional step on removing the Windows 7 entries from the grub menu. Note that it isnt necessary.
If you want to remove the Windows 7 entries from the grub menu, just login into Linux Mint, open the terminal and enter
sudo update-grub
Enter your password if you are asked for it. Note that you wont see your password while you entering it.
Hit enter then you should see all the remaining entries listed in the terminal.
You can now close terminal because were done
SCREENSHOTS -
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