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Unable to remove Windows recovery disk from Startup Manager

Hi all. I hope someone can help me with this. When I boot my MacBook into the Startup Manager (holding Option on boot up) I see a disk choice labeled "Windows" that I seem to be unable to remove, and if I select it for startup, it goes into what looks like a Windows recovery screen. These are the steps that seem to have gotten me here:


  1. I had macOS installed plus a Boot Camp Windows 10 installation that both worked just fine.
  2. I installed Parallels 14, and it gave me the choice to use the Boot Camp installation as my Windows VM so I did so. That seemed to work just fine, too. I have a feeling it tweaked the Boot Camp installation in some way, but I don't know now.
  3. I decided to quit using the Boot Camp installation as my Windows VM, so I installed a brand new Windows VM in Parallels in macOS.
  4. When I decided I was happier with the new Parallels VM than with the Boot Camp VM, I deleted it from the Parallels Control Center, and then I tried to use the Boot Camp Assistant to remove the Boot Camp partion. Boot Camp Assistant told me it was unable to delete the partition. I wish I had made a note of the error message, but unfortunately I didn't.
  5. So I decided to just delete the Boot Camp partition using the Disk Utility. That seemed to work except...


Now if boot my MacBook into the Startup Manager, I see both a macOS and a Windows disk. Choosing the macOS disk boots macOS no problem. Booting the Windows disk gets me into a Windows recovery screen.


I can see no trace of the Windows partition anywhere else, not in Disk Utility and not in the System Preferences Startup Disk window. If I run "diskutil list" in a terminal window, I get an output that is identical to another MacBook I have that has never had Boot Camp or Parallels on it:


/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         1.0 TB     disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.0 TB     disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            626.2 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 44.5 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                517.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4


I even tried an NVRAM reset, but that didn't make any difference either.


In all honesty, this issue does not affect the usability of my MacBook at all, but I would feel better if I could get rid of that Windows recovery disk in the Startup Manager. Any ideas how to fix this, short of a complete reinstall of the MacBook?


Details: MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016, with Touch Bar), macOS 10.14.3 (18D109) Mojave


Thanks for any help!

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Mar 24, 2019 12:27 PM

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Posted on Mar 24, 2019 1:04 PM

You should not see that error message on a 2016 MBP. You have a Microsoft EFI partition.


Boot Camp Assistant told me it was unable to delete the partition. 


You do not have BC partition anymore as you show, but the BCA failed to remove the parts stored in the EFI partition.


You can manually mount EFI partition using


diskutil mount disk0s1


and look for a Microsoft directory in the EFI partition, and move it to Trash and empty it.

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Question marked as Best reply

Mar 24, 2019 1:04 PM in response to Geez Jan

You should not see that error message on a 2016 MBP. You have a Microsoft EFI partition.


Boot Camp Assistant told me it was unable to delete the partition. 


You do not have BC partition anymore as you show, but the BCA failed to remove the parts stored in the EFI partition.


You can manually mount EFI partition using


diskutil mount disk0s1


and look for a Microsoft directory in the EFI partition, and move it to Trash and empty it.

Unable to remove Windows recovery disk from Startup Manager

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