2018 Macbook Pro, Bootcamp partition not showing as boot option in Startup Manager (Catalina 10.15.6)

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Level 1

8 points

2018 Macbook Pro, Bootcamp partition not showing as boot option in Startup Manager (Catalina 10.15.6)

I have tried to follow Loner T's recovery processes from other posts but have been unable to recover the ability to boot to my Windows 10 Bootcamp drive.

My Bootcamp drive is showing up as a "Microsoft Windows (Legacy Boot)" drive according to Paragon NTFS.

Bootcamp drives on other household Mac's show "Microsoft Windows (UEFI)" and all work fine from the option - Startup Manager.

Below is a shot of my diskutil list.

Windows, Windows 6

Posted on Aug 11, 2020 9:59 PM

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Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Aug 11, 2020 10:02 PM in response to HTXNine

A 2018 Mac does not support a Hybrid MBR (legacy BIOS). If you manually created a MBR, you need to remove it. Your Mac only supports UEFI.

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Answer 2

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Aug 12, 2020 6:29 AM in response to HTXNine

Paragon NTFS can be the cause of problem, too. It can corrupt NTFS, if it does not manage the file system correctly.

From macOS Terminal, can you post the output of

diskutil list

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

You may need to disable SIP temporarily.

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Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Aug 13, 2020 7:39 PM in response to HTXNine

From macOS Terminal, in /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/ do you see a Boot directory?

This example is from a 2018 MBP.

ls -lag /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/
total 48978440
drwxr-xr-x@  1 staff            0 Sep 13  2019 $Recycle.Bin
-rwxr-xr-x@  2 staff            0 Feb 10  2020 $WINRE_BACKUP_PARTITION.MARKER
drwxr-xr-x@  1 staff            0 Mar 24 12:54 $Windows.~WS
drwxr-xr-x   1 staff         8192 Aug  3 14:21 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 17 wheel          544 Aug 13 22:09 ..
drwxr-xr-x@  1 staff            0 Sep 13  2019 Documents and Settings
drwxr-xr-x   1 staff            0 Mar 24 12:56 ESD
drwxr-xr-x   1 staff            0 Aug  7 18:14 Intel
drwxr-xr-x@  1 staff            0 May  2 14:13 OneDriveTemp
drwxr-xr-x   1 staff            0 May 14 20:35 PerfLogs
drwxr-xr-x   1 staff         8192 Jun 26 16:12 Program Files
drwxr-xr-x   1 staff         8192 Jul 20 16:42 Program Files (x86)
drwxr-xr-x@  1 staff         4096 Jun 26 14:45 ProgramData
drwxr-xr-x@  1 staff            0 Mar 23 01:24 Recovery
drwxr-xr-x@  1 staff         8192 Aug  7 18:14 System Volume Information
drwxr-xr-x   1 staff            0 Mar 31 18:21 TFTP-Root
drwxr-xr-x   1 staff            0 Mar 23 01:24 Users
drwxr-xr-x   1 staff        16384 Jul 28 15:04 Windows
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 staff   6806573056 Aug  7 18:14 hiberfil.sys
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 staff  18253611008 Aug  7 18:14 pagefile.sys
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 staff     16777216 Aug  7 18:14 swapfile.sys

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Answer 4

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Aug 13, 2020 9:02 PM in response to HTXNine

Paragon NTFS called it a legacy BIOS installation, but I do not see any indications so far.

Are you able to see Windows files in macOS Finder?
Do you have a backup of your important Windows files?
If you mount the EFI partition - disk0s1 - do you see a Microsoft directory?

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Answer 5

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Aug 12, 2020 9:24 AM in response to HTXNine

This looks fine. You do not have a MBR. Can you temporarily uninstall Paragon NTFS and we can check bootability?

Also, see https://kb.paragon-software.com/article/204.

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Answer 6

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Aug 13, 2020 3:22 PM in response to HTXNine

Can you run a SMC and NVRAM Reset and test?

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Answer 7

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Aug 13, 2020 5:50 AM in response to HTXNine

Does Bootcamp show up in System Preferences -> Startup Disks?

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Answer 8

HTXNine Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 11, 2020 10:10 PM in response to Loner T

This is what is perplexing...I didn't (knowingly) change anything and everything was fine until a couple of months ago when I tried to get into Windows and was unable to. I am just now trying to address the problem and have spent the past several nights trying to follow you other threads addressing this.

This Mac is just about 1 year old and I am the on that installed Windows Bootcamp last summer. I know from reading your other posts, this partition must be UEFI and would assume when I installed Bootcamp last year it would have been set up as a UEFI drive. That is why I am confused as to how it changed.

BTW, exact same story with my son's computer but his still says UEFI according to the Paragon view.

Following your thread with Opi-OPi, I am able to boot into a USB windows drive but when I Lis volumes from the command prompt, Bootcamp does not show up.

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Answer 9

HTXNine Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 13, 2020 7:08 PM in response to Loner T

I ran resets for SMC and NVRAM. There was no change. I received the same "bless tool" error message through Startup Disk when I tried to restart in Bootcamp.

Also, option-Startup Manager only shows the Macintosh HD as a bootable option.

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Answer 10

HTXNine Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 14, 2020 7:34 PM in response to Loner T

See responses below.

Are you able to see Windows files in macOS Finder? Yes

Do you have a backup of your important Windows files? Yes, data files are backed up. I have two programs on Windows that would be very difficult to replace. That is why I can't just wipe Bootcamp and start over and am looking at restoring.