After Installing Lion how do i get the windows partition back?

David, what is the name of the program you used? Is it for Mac?

And did anybody try to take your Mac's HD out to rescue files by connecting it to another computer?

I went to the Genius bar today to find out how I could continue to get Boot Camp updates on my late 2010 macbook air. The "genius" said I had to upgrade to Lion to get the updates. He gave me the directions: upgrade to Lion, generate the Boot Camp software in Lion, install that into Windows.

I guess the "genius" wasn't aware that upgrading to Lion hoses the Windows partiton. 10 months later and it still has the same destructive behavior? I can only guess this is by design. From Apple programmers all the way to their support staff, they sabotage Windows users.

chasingmars: I tried what you said, booting from the Windows installer disk and running through the recovery options, but it simply does not recognize the Windows partition, so there's no automatic recovery option.

Has there been any further update on how to get access to your Boot Camp partition? I just installed Lion and I have lost my partition also and it is now named "diskOs4". Please let me know.

Hi Cuppah. Sorry to hear of your trouble.

Unfortunately, short of buying very expensive data recovery software, you're probably out of luck.

I tried every suggestion given on this thread and others. I also took it to the Genius bar where they looked up internal documentation that says that "Windows 7 is only supported on new installs of Lion". In other words, if you tried to upgrade to Lion and you didn't have the foresight to read internal release notes, it's already too late.

I suggest you do what I did - pretend your laptop was run over by a bus and the data is unrecoverable, have a Genius at the Apple store reinstall the laptop from scratch, then sell it on eBay to someone who doesn't care that Apple repeatedly and carelessly destroys the Windows partition.

I've never had Windows or any other partitioning software corrupt a partition like that without extensive warnings.

Also, if you haven't already, please submit detailed and polite feedback on www.apple.com/feedback expressing what a terrible user experience this is, and how their lack of responsiveness to the issue is simply despicable.

Hi,

Today I upgraded Mac OSX Lion to Mac OSX Mointain Lion.

After the upgrade I can't access my Windows 7 Pro partition anymore...

How did you fix that? Did you insert a Windows installation disk, went to recovery,.. but what options did you choose? I'm not sure and I don't want to lose anything...

To be clear:

BEFORE Mountain Lion upgrade: Mac OSX Lion (500GB partition) and Windows 7 Professional (250GB partition)

AFTER Mountain Lion upgrade: Mac OSX Mountain Lion (500GB Partition)

Hi Sebastien.

You've probably already lost something. Best I can tell, the recovery partition that Lion creates overwrites the first few hundred megabytes of the Windows partition, thoroughly corrupting Windows. To recover some of the data, you will need to boot into another operating system and run recovery software on the now corrupt partition to detect and reclaim still valid files.

In the past, I've used Active File Recovery (http://www.file-recovery.com/) with good success, but that runs on Windows. If you can remove the hard disk and mount it in a Windows system, I would recommend trying that. Otherwise, you might see if there is NTFS file recovery software that will run on your Mac.

Note, you will probably only be able to recover select files. The likelihood you will recover the partition is slim. Only one user has reported success, and his technique has failed to be repeated.

Please also take the time to send a nasty-gram to Apple (apple.com/feedback) explaining how ignoring this bug is unacceptable.

Thanks for helping man but look what I did.

So I upgraded to Mountain Lion, I noticed that bootcamp was gone. But after doing some research I found ou that Tuxera NTFS might have been the reason why bootcamp didn't show at startup/startup disk because Apple apparently don't allow 3rd part apps for HDD's or something like that...

So I uninstalled Tuxera ntfs, rebooted my Mac and all of a sudden the option to boot Windows was back.

I opted to boot Windows but when it's booting I get the error: BOOTMGR Unavailable...

Now I'm stuck with that, I was thinking to go to an Apple Store tomorrow, but will they be able to help? Because actually you need Windows knowledge for that... Would you go to an Apple Store if you were standing in my shoes?

Thanks for helping guys!

And no, Apple didn't warn me of anything, but how could the update erase a part of my windows partition, my Mac partition has 300gb of free storage...

No offense, but as a general practise one should have a backup at all time, or actually 2.

Before updating to a new OS, a backup of all your data, including OS, is essential.

Windows offers a built-in utillity to create a system backup which can fully restore a backup to a new partition (in which case you would need the Windows Install DVD). Works just fine, not only for this case, but also in the event Windows needs to be restored because of Windows issues (and yes, that does happen)

Never just update... Backups are essential.

Going to an Apple Store might not help, unless those guys would be experienced Windows users/ engineers... not why do I think that is not the case... 😀

Any way, what you can try is to boot from the Windows DVD, and from the menu that comes up you choose repair. If windows is still there, then the repair program will find it and will attempt to repair it.

If this doesn't work, I am afraid you would have to reinstall.

When windows is back I suggest you create a systemback up on an external drive, just in case...

For Windows Restore Image, you don't choose the windows Backup Utility, but the System Restore util,

If you want, I will decribe the needed steps, but for that I would have to boot to Windows. It is there and works fine.

But the restore has to take place on the SAME HDD. A different HDD is basically not a restore but a new install (at least that is how Microsoft will treat it) which will result in having to activate the installation again.

I am making backups, by simply copying files to a mirrored external harddrive and of that I have another backup.... Just in case...

Whether the Apple OS is worse then Linux or not (is that even possible? worst then Linux...) is beside the point as it comes to making backups, in fact, let's assume it is worse, especially then you should have an adequate backup solution.

Again, if you need any help on the Restore image of Windows making it by Windows, just let me know. I had to restore my Windows 7 a couple of weeks ago and it worked just fine.