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How to delete GRUB files from a Boot

EFI partition in Windows 10
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on September 5, 2015

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After several failed attempts to dual-boot Ubuntu 15.04 and Windows 10 on a single hard drive
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and on a computer with UEFI firmware, and not knowing what caused the first failed attempt, I your email
figured that subsequent failed attempts must have been due to an existing Ubuntu GRUB folder
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in the Boot EFI folder.

Especially since the machine always froze when the installer is attempting to install GRUB
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So I thought that If I could just delete the ubuntu folder from the Boot EFI folder, that the
installation would complete successfully. Ultimately, it didnt, but I figured out how to delete
GRUB files from inside Windows 10, from the command line.

This post documents how it was done. It involved, from the command line, listing and
selecting the detected hard drives, listing the partitions on the hard drive, then, finally, listing

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and deleting the target folder. Another reason you might want to do this, is if you deleted the
Linux partitions, which would not automatically delete the GRUB files from the Boot EFI folder.

To start, log into Windows 10, click on the menu and type cmd. Then right-click on the
terminal applications icon and select run as administrator. Figure 1 show the commands
(underlined) used to accomplish the first step listing and selecting the hard drive. To make it
possible to copy-and-paste, for those who might need to, Ive provided the commands in the
code block after the last image.
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In this figure, the target disk is shown as a 465 GB hard drive, with GPT partition.

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Figure 1: Using diskpart to list hard drives detected on Windows 10

After the target disk has been selected, its partitions are listed, so that the partition (volume)
that corresponds to the Boot EFI folder can be identified. In Figure 2, that partition is Volume
2. Its usually the only volume with FAT32 in the Fs (file system) column, and System in the
Trying to prevent
Info column. After it has been identified and selected, you assign it a drive letter to make it
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easier to work with. In this example, I assigned it a drive letter D. After that, exit diskpart.
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Figure 2: Listing disk partitions on Windows 10

The final task involves changing into the Boot EFI folder, listing its contents to identify what
subfolder the GRUB files would be. It will be in the EFI folder. The GRUB files for the
distribution that was installed will be under a folder of the same name as the distribution. For
example, if Ubuntu was installed, as in this example, the name of the folder will be ubuntu.
Delete the folder using the rmdir /s command. Thats the Windows 10 equivalent of the
Unix/Linux rm -r command.

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Figure 3: Deleting non-empty Ubuntu GRUB directory in Windows 10

All the commands used are given in this code block. Note that this procedure is not necessarily
the best or only way to go about do this, so if you know of a better method, post a comment.

Windows 10 command line Shell

0 ## These commands are used to identify and select the hard drive
1
2 diskpart
3
4 list disk
5
6 sel disk 0
7
8 ## These commands are used to list the partitions, select the Boot EFI partition,
9 ## then assign it a drive letter
10
11 list vol
12
13 sel vol 2
14
15 assign letter=D:
16
17 exit
18
19 ## These commands are used to change into the Boot EFI folder and delete the GRUB folder
20
21 cd /d D:
22
23 ls
24
25 ls EFI
26
27 cd EFI
28
29 ls
30
31 rmdir /s ubuntu

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8 Comments

Kozero
January 1, 2016 at 8:48 am Reply

Thanks a million, after hours of struggle savior rescues me and now I have a grub free computer. I did this on windows 8.1 and replaced the
ls command with dir.

finid
January 1, 2016 at 10:36 pm Reply

Cool!

M Salman Tariq
December 24, 2015 at 9:35 pm Reply

Thank you so much man it worked finally after looking for many other tutorials.

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02/01/2016 HowtodeleteGRUBfilesfromaBootEFIpartitioninWindows10|LinuxBSDos.com

However the ls command didnt work and wasnt recognized as internal or extranal command so i directly tied cd EFI and first deleted ubuntu
and then grub as well.

what caused this was the fact that i deleted ubuntu and merged the partitions but in EFI the grub and ubuntu remained and hence grub loaded
instead of windows, now that grub and ubuntu are both gone now only Windows 10 loads.

Thanks again.

Som
December 13, 2015 at 2:55 pm Reply

Great tutorial. It solved my problem. This is the easiest method it can be scariest for some people though. Other option is through USB
recovery disk.

OC-MVP
December 9, 2015 at 10:25 am Reply

Thank you, after going through all other websites and videos, this worked for me!!!! Thanks once again

finid
December 9, 2015 at 11:08 am Reply

Youre welcome.

aarn
September 6, 2015 at 2:20 am Reply

Gosh you do suggest a complex undertaking!. I have a 64bit dual boot win 10 preview (the penultimate one) and good old lubuntu 14.04. I
downloaded the .iso for win10 (build 10264 or somesuch) and created a bootable usb using rufus.exe. Then I opened the usb and deleted the
UEFI folder, and another UEFI subfolder.
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Closing down and rebooting from a usb with bootable lubuntu 14.04, the main drive was formatted to FAT32. Closing down again, the system
was rebooted from the bootable win10 usb, and win10 installed (25 character product key was required).
The result was a system with 300Mb legacy (not UEFI) boot partition and the rest devoted to win10. From there it was just the usual downsize
the win10 partition (it was left with 40Gb on a 120Gb ssd) and install lubuntu 14.04.3 in the 80Gb empty space, which the usb recognised
automatically.
So, this method misses out on the advantages (???) of UEFI. But once you have your dual-boot system running, in win10 go to then and switch
off/over-ride all the hibernate and sleep options. When you reboot into linux, your win10 partition should be totally accessible. Whereas
with a UEFI boot partition, and/or sleep/hibernate options enabled, linux finds it difficult to work with win10

finid
September 6, 2015 at 7:35 am Reply

Wouldnt it have been better to just switch to Legacy BIOS mode?

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