Is it safe to delete 500mb system partition created by CentOS on Dual boot

I had installed CentOS on my system. I have Windows already available. There are two partitions of 40 40 GB each on the drive. As Centos cannot read NTFS drive I had deleted the other 40Gb partition and converted the same to raw. Now there were some errors because of I do not want to install CentOS. There is a 500MB system partition I can see in Disk Management.

Should deleting the same is safe or not. I had formatted the drive which was kept for CentOS installation. It is not regular windows drive and empty. But on boot I can see CentOS bootloader. I think by deleting the 500mb system partition I can get rid of that bootloader. But will that affect Windows boot. If yes then how can I fix that instantly. I do not want to re-install Windows back again

This looks a bit complicated. Deleting the system partition simply means removing linux os completely from your system. You can do that by restoring the windows bootloader or running fixmbr command.

There are two ways to deal with this problem. First formatting the disk completely so that you can wipe out grub installed at the time of boot. If you are lucky windows will load up normally. But if there is any error related to bootloader not found or os not found then you have to use Windows installation disc. If you are using Windows Visa or Windows 7 then insert Windows bootable disc in your system and boot from the disc. Then on the installation Window at the below side you can see Repair option. Click on that and then click on Fix Startup. This will automatically scan your system of operating system and fix the bootloader.

This has worked in my case maximum time. The second option is for Windows XP. Boot from Windows disk and press R to enter the console mode. Or you can enter the same via Windows boot utility. Now type fdisk /mbr to fix the loader. After a reboot your windows will be back to normal.

I think that can done by just formatting the linux partition. There is nothing much to worry about the same. In case of system partition run startup repair. The grub will disappear.

You can do that by using EasyBCD disc. This disc can help you to restore your windows startup. For that create a bootable disc of easy bcd. EasyBCD is your bootloader manager a powerful tool to control and modify setting related to dual boot setup. You can re-order the number of operating system install in your system or even remove which is not needed. So download and run this. Now format the linux drive and then from remove the Linux boot entry. You can also click on repair to fix the boot-loader automatically.

If this does not work then the last option is startup repair which is mentioned above and if this also does not work then there is no way other than re-installing windows back again. If there are chances of re-installation then Windows 7 creates a Window.old file to protect your old data. The same is no available in Windows XP. For such kind of operation you must always keep a data backup.

EasyBCD is a paid software. According to me fdisk can do the job. You just need to enter command prompt for that. It is not a complicated process but needs some technical know how.

I was wondering that Linux installation disc must also come with some kind of boot repair software. Once you remove it or do not want, then you can use the boot repair utility to restore your operating system back again. I had did this before with my Windows 7 pc. I had installed red hat on it. But the removal was a bit tricky. I tried number of stuff but still on boot I face errors. I was not able to understand what wrong I did. Everything went fine at the time of removal. The last option that I had was to re-install windows. Luckily I had installed a recovery partition which was having the image file of my C drive. I restored that and within minutes my system was up. Somehow EasyBCD is a good tool, but you will have to buy that. There is no free version of the same.

Bootloader is a complicated stuff if not fixed properly then your system can fail to boot. So for that you need to ensure that you use the right tool. I will not recommend you to play with third party software.

I had done that many time by using fdisk /fixmbr. For that what you need to do is enter windows safe mode if you are not having windows bootable disc. That you can do when windows tries to boot after showing the bootloader.

Type the command and wait for sometime. The command usually runs form C drive through which it overwrites the current bootloader. It removes all those os which are not listed and install the current one. You can also modify the bootloader os entry from My Computer > Properties > Advance.

That is the reason you use Ubuntu's method of installing Windows and this OS side by side. In this process it install the operating system on C drive only, but on some hidden space. Next you can remove that from Control Panel > Add remove program. There is no need to worry about bootloader stuff here.