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So, having bought a Raspberry Pi 2 for the first time a couple of days ago, I watched some videos online about this thing we all know as OSMC. I use the EXE file installer and it installs it to the 8 GB Raspberry Pi 2 SD card that came with the Raspberry Pi 2 when purchased.

I run OSMC, it works well, but then I realize I hate it. I want to remove it and switch back to NOOBS/Raspbian which I had already run a lot before installing OSMC. The problem is I can't figure out how to get to recovery mode on OSMC, because I want to revert back to Raspbian.

How can I turn OSMC and/or remove it and switch back to my default OS?

If it helps, I'm using a Logitech K120 USB Keyboard.

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  • Hello EpikRogue, you don't set the question to answered. You can accept an existing answer (if the solve the problem) or write your own answer and accept that. There should be a check mark below the arrows for up-/downvoting to do so. Check the tour if in doubt.
    – Ghanima ♦
    Jan 5, 2016 at 17:20

2 Answers 2

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For Windows users:

  1. Put the Pi's SD card in your computer.
  2. Download Raspbian and unzip it.
  3. Install Win32DiskImager.
  4. Open Win32DiskImager, select the Raspbian image you downloaded and press Write.

For Linux users

  1. Put the Pi's SD card in your computer and make sure it isn't mounted.
  2. Download Raspbian, unzip it and rename it to raspbian.img.
  3. Open a terminal in the directory where the Raspbian image is in.
  4. Assuming the SD card is on /dev/sdb, type in sudo dd if=raspbian.img of=/dev/sdb bs=4k
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    Instead of downloading raspbian you can download noobs.
    – John Keates
    Jan 1, 2016 at 13:00
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I think you will want to hold down a key on the keyboard when the Pi boots up so that NOOBS does not load the chosen OS but instead comes up into its own Distribution installation/un-installation screen. The key IS "SHIFT" and it seems to need to be held down at the point where the rainbow coloured screen fades out - on the later Pis that show it.

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  • Problem is, when I hold down SHIFT, nothing happens when it boots up.
    – Wanderlust
    Dec 31, 2015 at 19:31
  • Ill try that. Is the rainbow colored screen you speak of referring to the OSMC start up screen before it boots you to the main menu?
    – Wanderlust
    Dec 31, 2015 at 19:48
  • It must be after the GPU firmware is loaded but before NOOBS starts up the selected OS, which in your case is OSMC. I do not know off-hand how the older models presents this - the RPi Model B I have is headless. The result I gave above is from a RPi 2 Model B - which looks to be what you are using.
    – SlySven
    Dec 31, 2015 at 19:53
  • Well, I keep trying different combinations of the left and right shift, but still nothing happens. I've tried the "exit" to shift to trigger the log in screen option, but it just kicks me to the console login instead of the actual console
    – Wanderlust
    Dec 31, 2015 at 20:17
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    If one uses the exe installer for OSMC as stated in the question, there is no NOOBS
    – Jaromanda X
    Jan 1, 2016 at 5:29

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