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Scotch_Brawth Author

Level 3

827 points

Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition

I'm running OS X 10.8 and Windows 7 x64 Pro.

After properly setting up Boot Camp to dual-boot Windows on my Mac mini, I decided to test whether or not it was true that creating another partition (a data partition for OS X) would interfere with Boot Camp. Wikipedia claims it does interfere but without citing a source, whilst the Boot Camp documentation itself only specifies that the disk must be a single partition _prior_ to setup - there's no mention of whether the disk must be _kept_ that way afterwards.

I opened Disk Utility, reduced the size of my OS X parition from 420GB to 80GB, and created a new partition in the unallocated space. Here's how it looks now:

When I attempted to proceed with the process, I did receive a warning that doing this (and I quote), "may" cause problems with Boot Camp. Seeing as it was inconclusive, I thought I'd give it a shot - nothing ventured…

Of course, it borked Boot Camp, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here. Whilst OS X boots just fine, the Boot Camp partition now no longer shows up in the Startup Manager, though it does in the Startup Disk prefPane. If I do attempt to boot into Boot Camp, I receive the following message on a black screen:

No bootable device --- insert boot disk and press any key

The advice given to someone who had this same problem was, "fix your damaged Boot Camp volume." But I'm at a loss as to how to do that.

So, anyone know how to proceed now so that I can keep my partitions as is, whilst fully restoring normal Boot Camp functionality?

Mac mini (Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jul 26, 2012 11:28 PM

1,534 replies

ipecek

Level 1

0 points

Mar 2, 2014 1:49 PM in response to Loner T

Reinstalled Windows because there was no other thing to do. OSX couldn't see the Bootcamp partition.

Now I'm trying to recover some files using EaseUS Recovery Wizard from OSX

Nuvect

Level 1

0 points

Mar 2, 2014 1:49 PM in response to Loner T

Loner T wrote:

The 2000 entry makes me question the MBR.

Can you unmount the Bootcamp partition and mount it again on the OS X side and see files in the Finder? Does Systems Preferences show Bootcamp at all in Startup Disk?

The Bootcamp partition does show as a volume in Sys Prefs in Startup Disk but attempting to select it results in the error message that Bless can't make it bootable so it won't allow me to choose it as a startup disk.

And yes, it unmounts and mounts correctly. Does not change the behavior in Startup Disk, however.

Not sure about about the 2000 sector size unused space, but I think I saw someone was told that was nominal. I suspect that is an artifact of diskutil not being able to do math when asked to create a new partition from an existing one.

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Mar 2, 2014 1:56 PM in response to Nuvect

Nuvect wrote:

Loner T wrote:

The 2000 entry makes me question the MBR.

Can you unmount the Bootcamp partition and mount it again on the OS X side and see files in the Finder? Does Systems Preferences show Bootcamp at all in Startup Disk?

The Bootcamp partition does show as a volume in Sys Prefs in Startup Disk but attempting to select it results in the error message that Bless can't make it bootable so it won't allow me to choose it as a startup disk.

And yes, it unmounts and mounts correctly. Does not change the behavior in Startup Disk, however.

Do you have the option of using Windows Recovery Console? My experience with WinClone is very limited. 😉

In a previous post yesterday, I had suggsted using VMware to validate that the OS is reasonable. Is that a valid option for you to test with, at least to make it usable?

Nuvect

Level 1

0 points

Mar 2, 2014 2:14 PM in response to Loner T

The problem right now is that I don't get far enough to find out whether or not the restored image will boot correctly. (I suspect it may not, I may need to startup in safe mode in order to install the latest drivers.)

I'm reluctant to point any kind of VM to the volume, tried that in the past with Parallels and regretted it. Parallels plays all kinds of games to boot off of a Bootcamp partition. I would prefer to see if I can understand why I can't get my Mac to boot to this volume before I start trying work arounds that could get me deeper into the weeds.

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Mar 2, 2014 2:25 PM in response to Nuvect

Winclone says "Migrate Boot Camp directly from one Mac to another". Is that what you tried? Can Winclone migrate Bootcamp to a single-partition target disk and create appropriate bootcamp compatible partition?

Nuvect

Level 1

0 points

Mar 2, 2014 2:55 PM in response to Loner T

The instructions call for you to create a Bootcamp partition using Bootcamp assistant (Winclone needs an appropriately sized partition.) I had to use DiskUtil, but otherwise yes, that is what I tried.

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Mar 2, 2014 8:05 PM in response to Nuvect

Nuvect wrote:

The instructions call for you to create a Bootcamp partition using Bootcamp assistant (Winclone needs an appropriately sized partition.) I had to use DiskUtil, but otherwise yes, that is what I tried.

I have read the following two links.

https://twocanoes.com/winclone/support/migrating-a-boot-camp-partition-with-winc lone-4

http://twocanoes.com/winclone/support/create-a-boot-camp-partition

Can you check the output of bless --info --verbose on your new MacPro?

Message was edited by: Loner T

Nuvect

Level 1

0 points

Mar 2, 2014 9:25 PM in response to Loner T

Loner T wrote:

Can you check the output of bless --info --verbose on your new MacPro?

Message was edited by: Loner T

Bless output below:

EFI found at IODeviceTree:/efi

Current EFI boot device string is: '<array><dict><key>IOMatch</key><dict><key>IOProviderClass</key><string>IOMedia </string><key>IOPropertyMatch</key><dict><key>UUID</key><string>76471791-9D49-41 66-8B30-6866C5AEFE99</string></dict></dict><key>BLLastBSDName</key><string>disk0 s2</string></dict></array>'

Boot option is 8BE4DF61-93CA-11D2-AA0D-00E098032B8C:Boot0080

Processing boot option 'Mac OS X'

Boot option matches XML representation

Found device: disk0s2

Disk boot device detected

mount: /

Mount point for / is /

GPT detected

No auxiliary booter partition required

System partition found

Preferred system partition found: disk0s1

Returning booter information dictionary:

<CFBasicHash 0x7f8aea407de0 [0x7fff794aef00]>{type = mutable dict, count = 3,

entries =>

0 : <CFString 0x10cd40e70 [0x7fff794aef00]>{contents = "System Partitions"} = (

disk0s1

)

1 : <CFString 0x10cd41650 [0x7fff794aef00]>{contents = "Data Partitions"} = (

disk0s2

)

2 : <CFString 0x10cd41670 [0x7fff794aef00]>{contents = "Auxiliary Partitions"} = (

)

}

finderinfo[0]: 47 => Blessed System Folder is /System/Library/CoreServices

finderinfo[1]: 2067987 => Blessed System File is /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi

finderinfo[2]: 0 => Open-folder linked list empty

finderinfo[3]: 0 => No alternate OS blessed file/folder

finderinfo[4]: 0 => Unused field unset

finderinfo[5]: 47 => OS X blessed folder is /System/Library/CoreServices

64-bit VSDB volume id: 0x26D2ABDEBBDDC52F

Mar 2, 2014 10:05 PM in response to peterjanbrone

I am sorry for the confusion.

That's more clear. Your problem isn't partitioning related. I don't know what Mavericks installer did or could have done to cause the problem. So my suggestion is to focus on Windows Startup Repair and bootrec.exe to get Windows XP booting again. The fact you get a logo and a BSOD means that it's at least getting well past the bootloader stage which means I'm not going to be of any help. It's possible the BCD is corrupt, so it's worth going through the longer set of steps of rebuilding the BCD.

Mar 2, 2014 10:12 PM in response to ipecek

I need your help, fast!

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

Could you guide me through it please?

No doubt it's not your intent to be rude, but asking for free help and asking for it quickly is in fact rude. Plus your data is clearly not that important to you if you're not backing it up, so why should anyone else care about it? Anyway, your case is the easiest type to do a quick fix so you can make a backup. Use fdisk to change the type code for partition 4 from 0C to 07 using the setpid command, and then use the flag command to set the boot flag on partition 4 also. This doesn't fix the large gap of free space you now have. The simplest fix for that is to totally reformat the drive with a single partition, and restore OS X and Windows from backups.

Mar 2, 2014 10:18 PM in response to BobTheFisherman

BobTheFisherman: Saying there's no way to repair it is obviously untrue, and you know this. It just seems like you want to punish people additionally for their bad choices and don't want to bother with the truly tedious explanation of how to repair the problem. But if you don't want to help them, fine, just unsubscribe from the thread. But telling people untrue things isn't good advice. That Apple doesn't provide tools that fix this problem, and in fact provides tools that actually cause the problem in the first place is where most of the ire should be directed.

Mar 2, 2014 10:20 PM in response to Loner T

That was to "ipecek". 😉

Our posts crossed.

This is why I generally ask people to stop posting to this thread, start a new one, and post its URL here. Otherwise it's just encouraging people to thread jack, which isn't good forum ettiquette. But it most just gets really confusing when more than one person is asking for help for different problems in the same thread.

Mar 2, 2014 10:24 PM in response to Nuvect

Your problem isn't a partition problem. The partitions are sync'd. The 4th MBR partition has the proper type code and is flagged bootable. So that points to a bootloader problem, for whatever reason Winclone hasn't restored the MBR boot strap code. Windows Startup Repair ought to be able to detect this, but if it doesn't then the bootrec.exe /FixBoot command ought to do that.

Mar 2, 2014 10:28 PM in response to Loner T

The 2000 entry makes me question the MBR.

It's just a gap of blank space less than 1MB, because Winclone likes to align the start of new partitions on 1MB boundaries.

Nuvect

Level 1

0 points

Mar 2, 2014 10:39 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

Christopher Murphy wrote:

Your problem isn't a partition problem. The partitions are sync'd. The 4th MBR partition has the proper type code and is flagged bootable. So that points to a bootloader problem, for whatever reason Winclone hasn't restored the MBR boot strap code. Windows Startup Repair ought to be able to detect this, but if it doesn't then the bootrec.exe /FixBoot command ought to do that.

Unfortunately, Startup Disk refuses to set the volume as a boot volume and it doesn't show when I boot with the option key down, so I can't tell whether Windows will boot or not. Is there a Mac OS X equivalent of bootrec.exe?

Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition