Booting Bootcamp partion from restored Bootcamp partition

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Booting Bootcamp partion from restored Bootcamp partition

My Boot Camp XP installation is no longer bootable after I restored from a backup I created in Disk Utility 2 days ago. The Bootcamp partition is not listed as bootable when I boot my MacBook and hold the OPTION key. When I configure my computer to boot from that partition in System Preferences, I receive a black screen with message "No bootable device"

I installed XP in Bootcamp and it was working fine. I needed to re-format my hard drive, and I used Disk Utility to make a backup of the partition. After re-formatting my hard drive, I restored the partition from the .dmg backup images, and all files are available.

All files are present as they were when my hard drive booted 2 days ago. I belive this is simply a matter of making the partition bootable. Can anyone help?

2008 MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jan 2, 2010 10:38 AM

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Answer 1

mackyg105 Author

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Jan 2, 2010 4:47 PM in response to mackyg105

After analyzing and trying things out, I was able to solve this. It seems that Boot Camp does not flag the partition as ACTIVE immedately after Boot Camp creates the new partition from windows.

Assuming you already have a .dmg image of your previous Windows Boot Camp partition, do the following:

:: 1
Use Boot Camp to allocate the new space. Don't use Disk Utility because the MBR will not be configured properly

:: 2
Use Disk Utility to restore your .dmg image to the new Boot Camp partition you just created. Be sure to run IMAGES --> SCAN IMAGE FOR RESTORE in Disk Utility before restoring. You may need to unmount the Boot Camp partition in Disk Utility before it begins to restore.

:: 3
Use fdisk in Terminal to mark the Boot Camp partition active. First, enter the fdisk MBR edit mode by running the following:

$sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0

Ignore the error "could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory". Then, determine which partition number to mark active by running the following (*in bold*):

fdisk: 1> show

Your windows partition should be #3 labeled "Win95 FAT-32". Now, mark the partition active:

fdisk: 1> *flag 3*
Partition 3 marked active.
fdisk:*1> write
Device could not be accessed exclusively.
A reboot will be needed for changes to take effect. OK? [n] y
Writing MBR at offset 0.
fdisk: 1> exit

Now, reboot and hold the OPTION key and Windows should be listed as a bootable option.

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Answer 2

Jan 3, 2010 1:19 PM in response to mackyg105

Thanks, this is very helpful. I'm going to be giving it a try in order to enlarge my woefully small Boot Camp FAT partition, but I'm running into something odd when I try to make a .dmg image of my Boot Camp partition... it's only 10GB, but the .dmg Disk Utility was creating was over 32GB when it was 1/4 of the way finished. At that rate the disk image would be larger than my entire hard drive. Is that normal?!

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