Dual-booting on a Vista machine turned out to be a really, really bad idea. At least when you are trying NOT to kill Vista in the process. Now cleaning out GRUB, reinstalling Vista’s MBR and re-extending all the partitions is in order. The number of hoops one needs to jump through, especially if you don’t have Vista install media is incredible. I personally tried deleting my GNU/Linux partition, then installing it again. Then I tried running Super Grub Disk to get my Vista MBR back. But that failed. So instead I downloaded and ran EasyBCD and rewrote my MBR that way.  EasyBCD unfortunately is not libre software, but it does a wonderful job of making the Vista experience less painful.

After that could I remove the GNU/Linux partition via my Wubied installed of Kubuntu. All that is left is for me to re-extend the main partition when I get around to it.  I’m NOT going to do that again.

So advice to anyone wanting to run Ubuntu GNU/Linux and NOT kill your Vista install for whatever reason, go the Wubi route. Always go the Wubi installer route, it will save you a lot of hassle. You the additional advantage that you can always uninstall Ubuntu GNU/Linux if you need to.