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Q: Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition

I'm running OS X 10.8 and Windows 7 x64 Pro.

 

After properly setting up Boot Camp to dual-boot Windows on my Mac mini, I decided to test whether or not it was true that creating another partition (a data partition for OS X) would interfere with Boot Camp.  Wikipedia claims it does interfere but without citing a source, whilst the Boot Camp documentation itself only specifies that the disk must be a single partition _prior_ to setup - there's no mention of whether the disk must be _kept_ that way afterwards.

 

I opened Disk Utility, reduced the size of my OS X parition from 420GB to 80GB, and created a new partition in the unallocated space.  Here's how it looks now:

/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/190/19047693-1.png

When I attempted to proceed with the process, I did receive a warning that doing this (and I quote), "may" cause problems with Boot Camp.  Seeing as it was inconclusive, I thought I'd give it a shot - nothing ventured…

 

Of course, it borked Boot Camp, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here.  Whilst OS X boots just fine, the Boot Camp partition now no longer shows up in the Startup Manager, though it does in the Startup Disk prefPane.  If I do attempt to boot into Boot Camp, I receive the following message on a black screen:

No bootable device --- insert boot disk and press any key

The advice given to someone who had this same problem was, "fix your damaged Boot Camp volume."  But I'm at a loss as to how to do that.

 

So, anyone know how to proceed now so that I can keep my partitions as is, whilst fully restoring normal Boot Camp functionality?

Mac mini (Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jul 26, 2012 11:28 PM

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Q: Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition

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  • by SumnerRain,

    SumnerRain SumnerRain Oct 25, 2013 3:25 PM in response to frankywashere
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 3:25 PM in response to frankywashere

    Thanks for this Franky, I followed your indtructions and I finally found the partition it could read.  A couple of questions... (for you or anyone who knows)

     

    Mine says

    MS Data           1173555200 1465147384  291592185

     

    in the spot yours says HPFS-NTFS.  Is that going to be a problem?

     

    Also, the two numbers are the real start and end numbers with the third being the total in sectors?  So these are the numbers I need to plug into gdisk, correct?

  • by SumnerRain,

    SumnerRain SumnerRain Oct 25, 2013 3:32 PM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 3:32 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

    Oh awsome, that is what I did when I went back and followed Franky's screen shots, and that answers the one question about if I found the correct start & end numbers. Thanks!

     

    Here is a screenshot for the correct partition (finally)

    Screen Shot 2013-10-25 at 3.06.55 PM.png

  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Oct 25, 2013 3:35 PM in response to SumnerRain
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 3:35 PM in response to SumnerRain

    The HPFS-NTFS is on the previous screen, so if you chose quit from where you are now you'd see a list that includes HPFS-NTFS option with these same numbers.

     

    1173554176 is the first sector of "free space" listed in the current wrong GPT, and 1173555200, and is only 512KB away and it's 1MB aligned. So there's a very good chance this is the true first sector for the missing Windows volume.

     

    And 1465147384 is less than 1MB from the last usable sector of the drive, so that's also the likely true last sector for the missing volume.

     

    So I'd go to gdisk, delete the current bogus partition 4, create a new partition 4, plug in these two values (the first two) as First and Last sector values when asked by gdisk. Again, 0700 is the type code. And then write it out and reboot. If Windows appears in the OS X Finder read only, then things are good. You'll either need to go back to gdisk to create a new hybrid MBR so that you can boot Windows. Or you can use this, each line if followed by a return

     

    sudo fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0

    [ignore the error message]

    setpid 4

    07

    flag 4

    quit

    y


  • by SumnerRain,

    SumnerRain SumnerRain Oct 25, 2013 4:28 PM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 4:28 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

    I have never had to delete a partition, would I type "sudo gdisk /dev/rdisk0" in terminal and then d to delete partition 4? 

  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Oct 25, 2013 4:37 PM in response to SumnerRain
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 4:37 PM in response to SumnerRain

    Yes. Once you're in gdisk you can hit ? <return> to list the menu of options. Pretty sure it's d <return> for delete and it'll prompt you for what partition to delete.

     

    Also in the help menu is how to create a new one, which I think is n <return> for new and then you just follow the prompts. When you're done with that, you're back at a command prompt, so ? again to see the list of options if you want, and find the command to write out the changes which is w <return>.

  • by SumnerRain,

    SumnerRain SumnerRain Oct 25, 2013 7:42 PM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 7:42 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

    Alright, so I can see Windows at startup (both on the Startup Disk or holding down Option), I can see it in Finder under Devices as well as all of my files, but like on page 49 I only see a blinking cursor when I try to load it.  (Origionally it told me no bootable device like the OP).   http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/209-69-windows-bootcamp-black-screen-blinkin g-cursor-ages-boot worked.  I tried the steps in the link above, but when I got to chose the OS you wish to repair, it could not find any OSes.  Any ideas? 

     

    ETA:  I went back into gdisk and selected verify and I found


    Warning! Mismatched GPT and MBR partition! MBR partition 4, of type 0x07,

    has no corresponding GPT partition! You may continue, but this condition

    might cause data loss in the future!

     

    Identified 1 problems!

  • by Arvin KalEl,

    Arvin KalEl Arvin KalEl Oct 25, 2013 8:42 PM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 8:42 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

    I need your help. please help me?

  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Oct 25, 2013 9:53 PM in response to Arvin KalEl
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 9:53 PM in response to Arvin KalEl

    You're going to have to post a coherent question if you want help.

  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Oct 25, 2013 9:54 PM in response to SumnerRain
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 9:54 PM in response to SumnerRain

    Did you follow these instructions?

     

    sudo fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0

    [ignore the error message]

    setpid 4

    07

    flag 4

    quit

    y

  • by Arvin KalEl,

    Arvin KalEl Arvin KalEl Oct 25, 2013 10:02 PM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 10:02 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

    i installed my mavericks and my bootcamp partition disappeared. There were afew threads like this as well, i followed the commands and i managed to see my bootcamp partition when i press "alt". But the thing is it says "missing operating system". How now? and ive also downloaded testdisk but i have no idea what to do with it.

  • by SumnerRain,

    SumnerRain SumnerRain Oct 25, 2013 10:03 PM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 10:03 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

    I did, that is when it went from saying no bootable device, to the blinking cursor of doom and frustration.  I noticed my sudo fdisk /dev/rdisk0 changed too.  I thought of trying the advice you gave the OP and go through those steps, but I was worried I would break it more.

     

    Macintosh:~ Heather$ sudo fdisk /dev/rdisk0

    Password:

    Disk: /dev/rdisk0    geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 sectors]

    Signature: 0xAA55

             Starting       Ending

    #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

    1: EE    0   0   2 -   25 127  14 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>

    2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 - 1171875000] HFS+       

    3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [1172284640 -    1269536] Darwin Boot

    *4: 07    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] HPFS/QNX/AUX

     


  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Oct 25, 2013 10:21 PM in response to SumnerRain
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 10:21 PM in response to SumnerRain

    Ahh OK, so thte MBR has wrong information in it. You'll have to recreate a new hybrid MBR with gdisk. That's menu option r for recovery menu, and then h for new hybrid MBR. And that's when you input, when prompted (I'm unsure of the order) that you want the EFI GPT in MBR partition 1. You want partitions 2 3 4 in the hybrid MBR. Accept the default type/hex code for each partition, and you only want partition 4 marked as bootable. Then write out that new partition and then reboot.

     

    Page 51 has the sequence on it with the answers in red.

  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Oct 25, 2013 10:22 PM in response to Arvin KalEl
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 10:22 PM in response to Arvin KalEl

    Well honestly go back to page 48 and start reading. If every person comes in here totally clueless and unwilling to make some effort before they ask questions, I'd be hanging around all night answering them and that's not going to happen. So if you can't make some effort, then you're better off doing the easy thing which is blowing away your whole disk, reformatting it, reinstalling OS X, redoing things from scratch with Boot Camp Assistant, reinstalling Windows from scratch, and then restoring your data from backup. That's easy. Tedious. But easy.

  • by SumnerRain,

    SumnerRain SumnerRain Oct 25, 2013 10:39 PM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 10:39 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

    Thank you so much!!  As soon as you mentioned it was in red I knew exactly which fix you meant, and it worked perfect!!  Windows is running flawlessly once again.  I seriously appreciate the help you have given me today, you have been incredibly knowlegable and helpful today.  After all this, I am turning off my computer and reading a book.  LOL!!

  • by Arvin KalEl,

    Arvin KalEl Arvin KalEl Oct 25, 2013 11:36 PM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 25, 2013 11:36 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

    yes i did follow all the steps as mentioned but this is where im stuck. :/ do i press quick search on the highlighted partition? or do i have to select the 4 *HPFS - NTFS partition then press click search?

    Screen Shot 2013-10-26 at 2.34.30 pm.png

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