So I have been messing around with linux for a while now, and I have concluded to a love hate relationship.  I’ve been toying around with Linux Mint in Vmware on my PC running Vista, and I love the look and feel of Mint, but to really appreciate the power of Linux Mint, you really need to run the OS natively on your machine.  Vmware is convenient and allows you to learn and play around with the OS, but the performance and features are just not all there.  So I decided to dual boot Linux Mint and Vista, not the best idea.

Why Revert?

First off, Linux Mint does an excellent job of automatically setting up a dual boot system for you.  During the installation you will be prompted if you prefer a dual boot setup, it installs and configures a grub loader for you to select which OS to boot during boot-up.  Linux Mint natively was real nice, I got everything to work out-of-the-box, some nice desktop enhancements and so forth.  I decided to remove Mint as I find myself using my desktop a lot less these days, I mostly work from my MacBook Pro.  My desktop is primarily a media server/download center/websurfing machine.  Some people argue that Linux is a perfect setup for that type scenario, however, I like to stream my downloaded content to 2 xbox 360’s in my house,  which Vista can handle much more gracefully.  Yes I know there are several applications for Linux that can accomplish the service, but come on really, we all know setting it up is a pain in the ass.  Also I am a fan of nzb downloads, and the Linux nzb apps are quite shitty.  I also enjoy doing some photoshop work on my desktop, since it has more hd space and i have a 22″ samsung on my desktop, photoshop is a much nicer experience on the double deuce, and gimpshop just doesnt cut it.

The Removal

I have 150gb sata drive for the dual boot setup, I now wanna get rid of Mint and keep on truckin with Vista with the full 150gb drive, what happens next?  I found the removal process rather daunting, as the installation was so simple and automated.  Seems like the Mint guys really want to make it easy to install and dual boot, but they want to make it a pain to remove, there is no easy “revert” button.  So I made a the massive mistake of deleting the Linux Partition while I was in Windows.  This was a bad idea.  Basically, in Vista, or Windows XP, if you R+Click My Computer, go to Management, click disk management, you will see you Linux partition.  From here you can R+Click it and erase it, format as NTFS, and gain all that extra space.  The excitement of gaining about 80gbs in a matter of minutes became so appealing, that I just wasn’t thinking straight.  You see when you are dual booting a linux/windows environment, GRUB is what controls the boot strap.  In other words, Linux is providing the tool that gives you the option of selecting which OS you would like to boot.  If you delete this partition, you also delete GRUB information.  GRUB will technically still be on the Hard Drive, it just wont contain any of the information it needs to perform the OS selection.  So… if and when you Vista machine restarts, instead of going into Windows, you will get the following error:

GRUB Loading stage1.5.

GRUB loading, please wait…

Error 22

At this point simply boot to your Vista installation disk and select recovery console.  In Vista Recovery Console, type the following commands:

bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr

Once the process completes, which should only take a couple of seconds, reboot your machine.  Once the machine boots into Vista, you will need to perform validation again in order to log into your  account.  So, if you have a pirated copy of Vista, you may have some issues here.  I know there are several OEM versions, and “Black Editions” floating around.  These versions of Vista will install without activation, and CAN be updated without having a serial number.  Explaining how that works is an entirely different article.  Just know, that you if are rocking that version of Vista, you are stuck like chuck, you are better off plugging your drive into another machine, back up your stuff, and just format your system, or go buy a key.  If you are buying a key, keep in mind that you cannot downgrade your version of Vista.  If you have a pirated version of Vista, you may indeed have Ultimate Edition, in that case, you need to buy an Ultimate Edition Key.  You can upgrade to Ultimate, you just cant downgrade.

My advise, if you wanna play with Linux, go download virtualbox, it is free and allows you to virtualize your OS.  If you want to learn Linux, just wipe your Windows machines and force yourself to use Linux.