scottieg
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Q: Lost boot camp Windows during upgrade to El Capitan

I have 24-inch Mid 2007 iMac.  I was using Boot Camp so that I could also boot into Windows Vista.   I recently upgraded successfully from Mountain Lion to Yosemite.  But then I attempted to upgrade to El Capitan, and the upgrade hung in the middle, never to finish.  I then restarted my iMac and both Mac and Windows partitions were gone. I was able to use Time Machine to recreate my Yosemite instance, but the Windows partition was still missing.  Furthermore, when I try to create a new partition with Boot Camp, , I get an error that says "the startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition."  How do I recreate my WIndows partition (I do have a backup) and my current Yosemite partition. 

Posted on Dec 15, 2015 7:58 AM

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scottieg

Q: Lost boot camp Windows during upgrade to El Capitan

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  • by rkaufmann87,

    rkaufmann87 rkaufmann87 Dec 15, 2015 8:07 AM in response to scottieg
    Level 9 (58,436 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Dec 15, 2015 8:07 AM in response to scottieg

    I would recommend moving this thread to the Boot Camp partition. Chances are that due to running very outdated MS Windows software you may have a problem however I'm not at all sure about this. My suggestion is to move this to the correct forum where the Boot Camp gurus would be.

     

    Would you like me to ask the moderator to move the thread?

  • by scottieg,

    scottieg scottieg Dec 15, 2015 8:33 AM in response to rkaufmann87
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 15, 2015 8:33 AM in response to rkaufmann87

    Yes, please go ahead and ask the moderator to move to the Bootcamp section.  Thank you for that suggestion.

  • by rkaufmann87,

    rkaufmann87 rkaufmann87 Dec 15, 2015 8:40 AM in response to scottieg
    Level 9 (58,436 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Dec 15, 2015 8:40 AM in response to scottieg

     

     

    please go ahead and ask the moderator to move to the Bootcamp section.

    Done. Good luck.

  • by Loner T,

    Loner T Loner T Dec 15, 2015 10:13 AM in response to rkaufmann87
    Level 7 (23,828 points)
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    Dec 15, 2015 10:13 AM in response to rkaufmann87

    Can you post the output of the following Terminal commands?

     

    diskutil list

    diskutil cs list

    sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

    sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

     

    The "sudo" commands will prompt for your password, and it will not be echoed back. You may also see a warning about improper use of "sudo" and potential data loss due to "abuse" of the command.

  • by scottieg,

    scottieg scottieg Dec 15, 2015 10:22 AM in response to Loner T
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 15, 2015 10:22 AM in response to Loner T

    Um, how to I get to a command line to execute those commands?

  • by Loner T,

    Loner T Loner T Dec 15, 2015 10:26 AM in response to scottieg
    Level 7 (23,828 points)
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    Dec 15, 2015 10:26 AM in response to scottieg

    Application -> Utilities -> Terminal.

  • by scottieg,

    scottieg scottieg Dec 15, 2015 10:51 AM in response to Loner T
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 15, 2015 10:51 AM in response to Loner T

    Macintosh:~ Scott$ diskutil list

    /dev/disk0

       #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

       0:      GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB   disk0

       1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB   disk0s1

       2:       Microsoft Basic Data 248.4 GB   disk0s2

       3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB   disk0s3

       4: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB   disk0s4

       5: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 250.1 GB   disk0s5

    /dev/disk1

       #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

       0:      GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB   disk1

       1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB   disk1s1

       2: Apple_HFS Gordon Mac backup       499.8 GB   disk1s2

     

     

    Macintosh:~ Scott$ diskutil cs list

    No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

    Macintosh:~ Scott$

     

    Macintosh:~ Scott$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

    Disk: /dev/disk0      geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]

    Signature: 0xAA55

    Starting       Ending

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

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

    1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254 63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>

    2: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254 63 [    409640 -  485058592] HPFS/QNX/AUX

    3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254 63 [ 485468232 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

    4: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 486737768 -    1269536] Darwin Boot

     

    Macintosh:~ Scott$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

    gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=500107862016; sectorsize=512; blocks=976773168

    gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

    gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

    gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 976773167

          start       size  index  contents

              0          1 MBR

              1          1 Pri GPT header

              2 32 Pri GPT table

    34          6

    40 409600 1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

         409640  485058592      2  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

      485468232    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

      486737768    1269536      4  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

      488007304        376

      488007680  488503304      5  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

      976510984     262151        

      976773135         32 Sec GPT table

      976773167          1 Sec GPT header

      Macintosh:~ Scott$

  • by Loner T,

    Loner T Loner T Dec 15, 2015 12:24 PM in response to scottieg
    Level 7 (23,828 points)
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    Dec 15, 2015 12:24 PM in response to scottieg

    1. The disk layout is a very strange one.

    2. You have two Recovery HD disks. The hung El Capitan upgrade may have left the second recovery HD.

    3. If you restored from TM, did you restore Yosemite or Mountain Lion?

    4. Usually, the first partition (GPT2) is the OSX version, but your disk has a Microsoft Basic Data as GPT2.

    5. GPT5 says it is OSX.

    6. Your MBR (Fdisk) output has not entry for a Windows partition any more. It may have been the result of killing the ELC upgrade. Did you get any errors during the ELC upgrade to indicate that it was hung.

    7. The number of partitions which are user visible (GPT2 and GPT5) will prevent any further partitioning using BC Assistant.

  • by scottieg,

    scottieg scottieg Dec 15, 2015 12:52 PM in response to Loner T
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 15, 2015 12:52 PM in response to Loner T

    Thank you for those points.  When I did the restore, from TM, I restored Yosemite.  I suspect that I recored to one of the earlier recovery disks, hence it is not the first partition.  And when I was doing the ELC upgrade, no errors.  The progress bar just stopped.  And stayed stopped all night. Right after a perfect upgrade to Yosemite.  Grrr.

     

    Can I somehow start from scratch and remove all the partitions, and reformat the whole thing, reinstall OSX, then BootCamp, then Windows? But all that might be above my skill level.

  • by Loner T,

    Loner T Loner T Dec 15, 2015 1:08 PM in response to scottieg
    Level 7 (23,828 points)
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    Dec 15, 2015 1:08 PM in response to scottieg

    1. Do you still have the 'Grey' restore disks which came with your Mac? Your Mac does not support Internet Recovery ( Computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery - Apple Support ).

    2. You can erase you whole internal disk when booted from the Grey disks, and restore from your TM backup and start cleanly.

  • by scottieg,

    scottieg scottieg Dec 15, 2015 1:34 PM in response to Loner T
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 15, 2015 1:34 PM in response to Loner T

    Yes, I do have the original grey disks.  Those go all the way back to 10.4 Tiger.  If I use them to erase the whole internal disk, will I be able to restore directly to Yosemite with my TM backup, or will I need to step through the various OSX upgrades to get to Yosemite?  And thank you for all your help.

  • by Loner T,

    Loner T Loner T Dec 15, 2015 3:27 PM in response to scottieg
    Level 7 (23,828 points)
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    Dec 15, 2015 3:27 PM in response to scottieg

    Do not use the 10.4 disks, because it uses an older partitioning scheme. Do you have the Yosemite Installer saved on your hard drive?

  • by scottieg,

    scottieg scottieg Dec 15, 2015 5:14 PM in response to Loner T
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 15, 2015 5:14 PM in response to Loner T

    Apparently I do not have the Yosemite installer.  Do I have any other options?

  • by Loner T,

    Loner T Loner T Dec 15, 2015 5:48 PM in response to scottieg
    Level 7 (23,828 points)
    Safari
    Dec 15, 2015 5:48 PM in response to scottieg

    You have a bootable OS X installation. Go to App Store and re-download the Yosemite installer. If you have an external HDD, please install Yosemite on this external disk (USB/Firewire) using How to install OS X on an external drive connected to your Mac - Apple Support . Once you have it installed on this disk, boot from it and test and then we can clean up the internal disk. You may not need your Tiger restore disks.

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