Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition

Your partitions look ok to me.

As Loner T has said it would be good to know which version of OSX you upgraded from.

I think that Mavericks does not support XP and this may be the problem (though that's just my guess).

Only if the Windows XP volume was resized after it was installed could partitions be an issue. If you did do a resize at one time, the problem is the OS X upgrade "fixes" the unsynced MBR by replacing it with a new one, so any information about the correct Windows partition is lost.

The fact you can navigate the Boot Camp volume's directory tells me you haven't ever resized the Windows volume since installation, and the MBR and GPT are still in sync, and that the problem you're having is unrelated to partitions. Why you're having this problem after installing Mavericks I can't explain because the Mavericks installer shouldn't affect anything in the Windows XP volume at all. The OS X and Windows environments are completely separate.

It is true Apple doesn't support Windows XP anymore. And thus it will refuse to permit an installation of Windows XP. But a previously existing installation of XP should still work, there is no dependency or interaction between the two OS's.

I think you should make a backup of the Boot camp volume from within OS X before doing anything else so at least you have current data - if you don't already have a current backup. Next, use Windows Startup Repair to try and repair the Windows XP installation and if that doesn't work then you'll need to go through the gory details of using bootrec.exe.

Thank you for the quick responses.

- yes I do have all data backed up

- yes I see the xp logo, xp worked fine (machine never booted into mac)

- I never changed partition size

- I did not update any bootcamp drivers 😟

- the vmware trick is what I wanted to do actually (reason I upgraded) it does not work however

I think the reason is this: xp checks a file bootcat.cache during boot in which it states there are 2 partitions + their sizes, now I have 3 partitions, if I were to delete the .cache file the error would disappear (says the internet).. my problem is the file is not there. Is there a possibility the problem goes away if I delete the recovery partition, or am I making it worse by doing that.

I will go through Windows Startup Repair as soon as I get my hands on a wired keyboard (first thing tomorrow morning), I cant seem to boot from disc using the function keys on my wireless keyboard.

P.S.

I don't mind gory bootrec.exe stuff. I really appreciate the insanely fast responses, if it is not too much to ask could you please follow up on my story till monday. I would love to fix this as I would not want to see my dad call every patient he has on monday to cancel their appointments..

Thing that ***** the most is I anticipated this, looked it up, read that it should not be any problem although it might, did it anyway. Fml.

- yes I see the xp logo, xp worked fine (machine never booted into mac)

Stop. You're confusing me because in your first post you said "When I try booting into xp I got a BSOD" yet now you're saying it works fine. You also said "I can browse my BOOTCAMP drive from mac" so I don't know what you mean by "machine never booted into mac". These are contradictory statements.

- the vmware trick is what I wanted to do actually (reason I upgraded) it does not work however

You did not state you were looking to use VMWare in your first post. You were trying to boot Windows XP via Boot Camp is what you told us.

Is there a possibility the problem goes away if I delete the recovery partition, or am I making it worse by doing that.

I have no idea why it would fix the problem because Windows ignores the Recovery HD. I think you've misinterpreted the cause of the problem and hence the solution, and now you're just assuming random fixes for a problem that no one understands. I'd focus on Startup Repair and go from there.

I am sorry for the confusion. The iMac had XP installed via bootcamp, my dad never ever used Mac OS X.

When I try booting into XP I see the xp logo and then I get a BSOD.

What I wanted to do is this: because of Microsoft not supporting XP any more I wanted my dad to do his banking on a mac, and use XP solely for the dental software. Since he didn't want to have to reboot to do payments I told him to use vmware or parallels or something instead. I booted into mac and noticed it was snow leopard, I installed updates and vmware fusion. Updating to maverickx broke the bootcamp. I was going to use the bootcamp disk to make a virtual machine out of it. Like Loner T suggested.

I can browse my bootcamp disk when I'm within Mac, I simply meant my dad never used mac to answer the question "did xp work before". I was going for: "yes it worked, my dad never used anything else"

My keyboard works for selecting to boot up from the windows xp disk, xp loads all necessary drivers etc and asks me to choose to either install, recover etc.

I just went out buying the most generic wired keyboard I could find on a sunday, it does not work during xp installation. Are there any workarounds for this?

Do you have an option to go back to a pre-Mavericks upgrade iMac state? In your case, Mavericks buys you no additional features/functionality, since the iMac primarly is a WXP machine only.

What happens when you try the VMware route? Some screen shots may be helpful.

What year is this iMac? The reason for asking is that Mavericks creates many new devices (eg Thunderbolt bridges, etc.) which may not have equivalent drivers for XP and XP becomes very nasty when devices show up that it cannot deal with. I have seen BSODs for many USB devices, which technically should work in XP.

You have a recovery option. For a keyboard, if you can find a Apple Wired USB keyboard, it may be ideal. BT devices usually do not work.

Hi guys,

I need your help, fast!

I manually shrinked the OSX partition to extend the Bootcamp one, and I can't see the Bootcamp option when booting.

I followed the instructions to get gpt and fdisk data so please help me to get this working again.

The only way to change the size of a Boot Camp partition is to use CampTune. Doing it "manually" will mess up your hard drive to the point where you will have to erase it, format the drive, reinstall OSX, then reinstall Windows using Boot Camp Assistant.

Yeah, easy to say now when the damage is done 🙂

I hope it's possible to repair it somehow because of the data on it I wish not to lose...

There is no way to repair it. You can try taking the drive out and using an external usb inclosure connect it to another computer. Then try to get your data off the drive while connected to the other computer.

You can recover your data from your backup, if you have one.

MBP Retina, so can't take the drive out unfortunately 😟

In your fdisk output, partition 4 has type hex "0C", needs to be hex "07", and needs to be flagged. Please use man fdisk in terminal (or there are examples in this thread beginning page 54) of "sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0". Can you try that?

I am getting this:

fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory

Enter 'help' for information

fdisk: 1>

Did you try extending your Bootcamp disk after the OSX side was resized?

The error message is expected (please use setpid and flag sub-commands to correct your partition 4 entry). Remember to use write as appropriate. Once you have it corrected, restarting the MAC with Option key, should show you the Bootcamp drive. (It may not boot properly, so a Windows Recovery may also be required).

fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory

Enter 'help' for information

fdisk: 1> ?

help Command help list

manual Show entire man page for fdisk

reinit Re-initialize loaded MBR (to defaults)

auto Auto-partition the disk with a partition style

setpid Set the identifier of a given table entry

disk Edit current drive stats

edit Edit given table entry

erase Erase current MBR

flag Flag given table entry as bootable

update Update machine code in loaded MBR

select Select extended partition table entry MBR

print Print loaded MBR partition table

write Write loaded MBR to disk

exit Exit edit of current MBR, without saving changes

quit Quit edit of current MBR, saving current changes

abort Abort program without saving current changes

fdisk: 1> print

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 121643/255/63 [1954210120 sectors]

Offset: 0 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: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 409640 - 1452530904] HFS+

3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1452940544 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1454211072 - 499998720] HPFS/QNX/AUX