You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

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

May 25, 2014 8:47 AM in response to fourwheelin

Wrong URL. That one points to this thread.

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

May 25, 2014 9:47 AM in response to iJojonathan

@Jonathan... You can try settting the 4th partition to bootable, using fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0 and verify if you get a missing OS error.

May 25, 2014 5:01 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

Hi Christopher,

Mea culpa. The link is https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6255964?answerId=25894313022#25894313022. I tried replacing with an earlier version of the partition map, but I am not sure if I made issues worse. I will continue from my original post there and dare not touch *ANYTHING* without solid advice.

Magiccam

Level 1

4 points

May 27, 2014 5:03 PM in response to Scotch_Brawth

May I congratulate you Scotch_Brawth for bringing an intelligent problem to the table and a congratulations goes to Christopher Murphey too for solving what would otherwise be a nightmare issue.

You see, I had a MAC/Win set up for the longest time and just the other day I decided to throw in Ubuntu to the mix using rEFInd to enable the Linux boot. I kind of had to as I need to unbrick my WD MyCloud box which I am desperate to dumb down and remove anything from the Debian OS that refers to WD, still no avail on that but I am sure there is a solution. Unfortunately it wont be as easy as fixing my MBR, since the CPU on the WD MyCloud is an ARMv7 and there are no easy solutions to re-installing a version of linux like we can on a main desktop with a DVD install. At this point it's a tad beyond my willingness to learn, for now, I'll revisit it later.

Anyway...

After installing Ubuntu I didn't try booting Windows until today and got the no boot error, the back of my mind said it must be a GRUB or MBR thing and low and behold I found this discussion and just went for it. Outstandingly easy fix for the brave, there is always the risk of bricking everything when moving partitions around, but to my surprise, it went well. If only Windows would stop forcing a reboot everytime it installs an update haha...but that's windoze for you.

So I say again, well done both of you 1 for creating a problem to find the solution, it's brilliant of you. and 2 for providing a very simple straightforward approach to fixing the issue. Excellent.

Well done.

Jun 10, 2014 1:39 PM in response to Scotch_Brawth

Okay, so I've tried following a lot of the suggestions here (and elsewhere) but things aren't working out. After partitioning my drive, Bootcamp screwed up, so I deleted the extra partition I made, used rEFIt to sync the two types of partition table, and now when I try to boot into Windows it says "Mission operating system"

So, here are some outputs:

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]

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 - 672913512] HFS+

3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 673323152 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 683804672 - 292968448] HPFS/QNX/AUX

diskutil list /dev/disk0

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 344.5 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 150.0 GB disk0s4

sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

gpt show: disk0: mediasize=500107862016; sectorsize=512; blocks=976773168

gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 976773167

start size index contents

0 1 MBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

409640 672913512 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

673323152 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

674592688 9211984

683804672 292968448 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

976773120 15

976773135 32 Sec GPT table

976773167 1 Sec GPT header

sudo gdisk /dev/disk0

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their

partition table automatically reloaded!

Partition table scan:

MBR: hybrid

BSD: not present

APM: not present

GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): p

Disk /dev/disk0: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB

Logical sector size: 512 bytes

Disk identifier (GUID): 13265745-381B-4B40-911F-972E67807321

Partition table holds up to 128 entries

First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134

Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries

Total free space is 9212005 sectors (4.4 GiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name

1 40 409639 200.0 MiB EF00 EFI System Partition

2 409640 673323151 320.9 GiB AF00 Untitled

3 673323152 674592687 619.9 MiB AB00 Recovery HD

4 683804672 976773119 139.7 GiB 0700 BOOTCAMP

Is this fixable? I'm currently copying from the Bootcamp HD, which I can see when booted into Mac, and backing it up to be safe.

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Jun 10, 2014 3:14 PM in response to JeffJev1741

Would you consider posting a new thread with your issue and a referernce to such a new thread here?

Jun 10, 2014 3:23 PM in response to Loner T

Sure!

Magiccam

Level 1

4 points

Jun 10, 2014 6:49 PM in response to JeffJev1741

You should not have deleted any partions... you only needed to move it. My guess is you will now need to start from scratch. Go to first page of this forum thread. Read, digest, understand and comprehend what is being said.

Don't go deleting partitions willy nilly.

Jun 10, 2014 7:15 PM in response to Magiccam

I'm looking for solutions going forward, not critiques of what has already been done.

Yes you could be right, but who knows.

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Jun 10, 2014 8:09 PM in response to JeffJev1741

One "hole" that is a mystery is this entry...

674592688 9211984

If there is a diskutil/gpt output before any changes were made, it would be helpful. Has a Windows recovery been attempted (using install media) after selecting it to boot either via "Startup Disk" or using the Option key during powerup?

Jun 10, 2014 8:26 PM in response to Loner T

Unfortunately no, changes were made before finding this thread...

I tried repairing with the install disc but it throws up an error that its the wrong version (could be that the disc is SP1, Windows 7, and the installed version is updated some way).

Jun 10, 2014 11:06 PM in response to JeffJev1741

I'm currently copying from the Bootcamp HD, which I can see when booted into Mac

The fact it mounts in OS X means the GPT is correct and the Windows NTFS volume is intact (mounted read-only I assume). That means most likely this is a bootloader problem and can be fixed with the Windows install media and using Windows Startup Repair.

Jun 10, 2014 11:07 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

If Windows Startup Repair doesn't like it then you'll want to search for the Microsoft technote on bootrec.exe and use that manually.

Jun 11, 2014 12:06 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

I didn't even do anything...but it works now! I was booting up to my Windows install DVD to try what you suggested and it went right into Bootcamp. I was able to go back into Mac and re-reboot in Windows, so all is well. Thank you everyone who offered suggestions!

themsbg

Level 1

8 points

Jun 13, 2014 5:52 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

You are a saviour. For me it was partition 4 not partition 5. But without you, I was about to completely wipe my bootcamp partition and have to restore everything from a backup and reinstall all my software. Thank you thank you thank you.

Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition