GRUB still detects windows

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

So I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.10 with Gnome 3 onto a brand new SSD, and to start with, there was no problemo. After a while however, I decided to re-format all of my old HDD's so that there was no trace of windows to be seen.

I re-formatted it just using the file manager in ubuntu, and said to make it write 0's over all of the 1's. I re-booted and discovered that GRUB still showed up saying that windows was available to pick as a boot option.

So I thought, oh, no worries. I shall just go ahead and sudo os-prober, then all shall be well, no more ugly windows 8eroony. But alas, as I typed in that line, hit enter and watched as it said "/dev/sdb1:Windows 8 (loader):Windows:chain" I sobbed a sad sob as I was not yet free of the curse.

I decided to try and get to the nuts of it, and held my breath, as I scrolled down in grub and hit enter on that cursed line. Yep, it boots. But only to system recovery, leading me to believe that only the essential bootloader for windows is left. How, I do ask shall I be rid of this, if re-formatting does not work? Where is this sneaky partition hiding?

2

Download and install Gparted.

Find the damn partition and nuke it for good. : D

3

Thanks dude, I can no longer detect it when I do sudo os-prober, but it still comes up as an option to boot from in grub. dafaq.

4

I figured it was a hard-coded boot entry but I guess that works.

5

Grub generates a table when you update it manually, so the partition is probably gone ( check with gparted ) but the entry is still in the list. If you are Ubuntu or Mint, use grub-customizer, then you can easily delete the entry, otherwise you probably just have to run update-grub and it might resolve itself when it sees there's no Windows partition there.

6

Try
update-grub in the terminal

7

this is how i would update grub entries in ubuntu-server 14.10, so it should work in the desktop as well

at user terminal
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

or at root terminal
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

i think fedora distros might use grub2-mkconfig.