Scotch_Brawth

Q: 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:

/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/190/19047693-1.png

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

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Q: Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition

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  • by Jeremy7812,

    Jeremy7812 Jeremy7812 Aug 20, 2012 3:45 PM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 20, 2012 3:45 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

    Yes I only encrypted the Data volume.  I backup using time machine.  It backs up to an external USB drive, also encrypted.  Is it better to encrypt the whole drive, including "Macintosh HD"?  I'm happy to take advice on a better way to layout the disk.

  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Aug 20, 2012 4:20 PM in response to Jeremy7812
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Aug 20, 2012 4:20 PM in response to Jeremy7812

    Since things are working now, I'm reluctant to suggest you change anything.

     

    For most people, the vast majority of things they want encrypted reside in the home folder,i.e. your user folder, which contains your documents, email, any web browser history, anything on the desktop, etc. So it's just easier to use folders to organize than it is to use partitions.

     

    The one advantage of a separate partition that's encrypted, is that this volume is not automatically unlocked by any user who has the ability to login to the computer. You must have a totally separate password to unlock Data. Wheras when you use File Vault 2 on the boot volume, all users who have login ability to the computer, unlock that volume. Now, normally they also have permissions in place to keep them from snooper around other users' folders and files, but that permissions layer is POSIX and ACL based, not encryption.

  • by Jeremy7812,

    Jeremy7812 Jeremy7812 Aug 21, 2012 1:20 AM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 21, 2012 1:20 AM in response to Christopher Murphy

    Ok thanks for your advice.  I think I'll keep it as it is for now, seeing as it's all working fine.

     

    cheers

  • by benscatter-good,

    benscatter-good benscatter-good Aug 26, 2012 5:16 AM in response to Scotch_Brawth
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 26, 2012 5:16 AM in response to Scotch_Brawth

    Ok, so I'm not really that Familiar with this, and I'd really appreciate someone walking me through it somewhat step by step

     

    I installed win7 but foolishly didn't give it that much space so decided to create a new partition. I made an NTFS partition.

     

    Similar situation to all, Bootcamp still available in startup disks under prefs, but not bootable.

     

    Cheers

  • by benscatter-good,

    benscatter-good benscatter-good Aug 26, 2012 11:57 AM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 26, 2012 11:57 AM in response to Christopher Murphy

    Ben-Scattergoods-MacBook-Pro-2:~ benscattergood$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

    gpt show: disk0: mediasize=750156374016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1465149168

    gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

    gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

    gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1465149167

           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  1132388040      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

      1132797680     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

      1134067216   211362288        

      1345429504   119717888      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

      1465147392        1743        

      1465149135          32         Sec GPT table

      1465149167           1         Sec GPT header

     

     


     

     

    Disk: /dev/disk0

    geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 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 - 1132388040] HFS+       

    3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [1132797680 -    1269536] Darwin Boot

    4: 0C 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [1345429504 -  119717888] Win95 FAT32L

     

     

    These are the two results, I'd really really really appreciate your help! 

     

    Cheers


  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Aug 26, 2012 2:15 PM in response to benscatter-good
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Aug 26, 2012 2:15 PM in response to benscatter-good

    What you want to do isn't possible with Apple's GUI tools. If you'd read the Boot Camp guide, you'd know the only prescribed method is to use Boot Camp Assistant to remove the Boot Camp partition and then start over with a new Boot Camp partition - all with the Assistant. I'm betting you used Disk Utility and now that's why you're in trouble.

     

    The GPT says there is a 10GB section of free space between partitions 3 and 4, unclaimed. And partition 4 is FAT32, not NTFS I'm not sure why you think you created an NTFS partition because Apple's tools can't do this either, and is 57GB.

     

    Anyway it's unclear what you want to end up with.

  • by benscatter-good,

    benscatter-good benscatter-good Aug 27, 2012 1:46 AM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 27, 2012 1:46 AM in response to Christopher Murphy

    What I want to achieve is to first of all understand what I did to stop it working and to then solve it.

     

    The partition I created was in MS-DOS, sorry.

     

    I'm still able to see the Bootcamp option under startup prefs but not able to boot.

     

    What I didn't mean to imply was that I'd like an easy fix

     

     

    Thank you

  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Aug 27, 2012 2:14 PM in response to benscatter-good
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Aug 27, 2012 2:14 PM in response to benscatter-good

    You created a new partition, that's what caused it to stop working. Once you create a Boot Camp partition, you have to use Boot Camp Assistant to destroy it and create another, or use a 3rd party resizing utility.

     

    Your choices at this point are all limited. The easiest but most tedious is to blow away the disk, and restore from backups, and start Boot Camp from scratch and this time give it enough space.

  • by jupe699,

    jupe699 jupe699 Sep 15, 2012 1:38 AM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 15, 2012 1:38 AM in response to Christopher Murphy

    Hello,

    i have been trying for a month now, since i upgraded to mountain lion to re-install windows with no success.

    Let me give you the facts:

    I have tried the same windows install disk that i successfully had in Snow Leopard.

    Tried also to install it from a USB thumb drive. Always after using boot camp to make the partitions, when the computer restarts it gives me a no bootable device error.

    I followed the instructions here and ended up with no system disk error.

    I cannot understand what the issue is. Here's some information if it can be any helpful at all.

     

    host-178-21-48-54:~ jupe69$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

    Password:

    gpt show: disk0: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168

    gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

    gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

    gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167

           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  1464843776      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

      1465253416     1269544      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

      1466522960         688        

      1466523648   487000064      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

      1953523712        1423        

      1953525135          32         Sec GPT table

      1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

    host-178-21-48-54:~ jupe69$ diskutil list

    /dev/disk0

       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0

       1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1

       2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            750.0 GB   disk0s2

       3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

       4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                249.3 GB   disk0s4

    /dev/disk1

       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

       0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1

       1:                  Apple_HFS Jupe's External Drive   1.0 TB     disk1s1

    /dev/disk2

       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

       0:                            Win7_sp1_32-64_EN-f... *4.5 GB     disk2

    /dev/disk3

       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

       0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk3

       1:                  Apple_HFS Time Machine            1.0 TB     disk3s1

       2:               Windows_NTFS New Volume              999.9 GB   disk3s2

    host-178-21-48-54:~ jupe69$

  • by C_Jones,

    C_Jones C_Jones Sep 18, 2012 12:07 AM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 18, 2012 12:07 AM in response to Christopher Murphy

    Hi Christopher,

     

    I seem to be having a similar problem and I am really uncomfortable with altering MBRs.  I have a Macbook Pro, with a hard drive with three partitions, OSX lion, blank storage in ms-dos format and a bootcamp with windows 8.  I also have another hard drive (SSD) that only has Windows 7 installed on it.  If I disconnect the 3part hard drive I can boot into windows 7 if I have both drive connected I cannot boot into the windows 7 installation only the windows 8 or OSX. I would really appreciate you helping me on this.

     

    Here is the output to the commands you have asked for earlier on other issues.

     

    sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

    gpt show: disk0: mediasize=256060514304; sectorsize=512; blocks=500118192

    gpt show: disk0: MBR at sector 0

          start       size  index  contents

              0          1         MBR

              1       2047        

           2048     204800      1  MBR part 7

         206848  499908608      2  MBR part 7

      500115456       2736

     

    sudo gpt -r -vv show disk1

    gpt show: disk1: mediasize=750156374016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1465149168

    gpt show: disk1: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

    gpt show: disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1

    gpt show: disk1: Sec GPT at sector 1465149167

           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   865825120      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

       866234760     1269544      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

       867504304        1872        

       867506176   253687808      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

      1121193984   343953408      5  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

      1465147392        1743        

      1465149135          32         Sec GPT table

      1465149167           1         Sec GPT header

     

     

    sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

    Disk: /dev/disk0          geometry: 31130/255/63 [500118192 sectors]

    Signature: 0xAA55

             Starting       Ending

    #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

    *1: 07    0  32  33 -   14 147  19 [      2048 -     204800] HPFS/QNX/AUX

    2: 07   14 147  20 - 1023 223  63 [    206848 -  499908608] HPFS/QNX/AUX

    3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused     

    4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

     

    sudo fdisk /dev/disk1

    Disk: /dev/disk1          geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 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 -  865825120] HFS+       

    3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 866234760 -    1269544] Darwin Boot

    4: 0B 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 867506176 -  253687808] Win95 FAT-32

     

    If there is anymore information I can get you on this let me know

     

    Thanks

  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Sep 18, 2012 9:04 AM in response to jupe699
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Sep 18, 2012 9:04 AM in response to jupe699

    @jupe699

    You have four disks attached, three of which are Windows volumes, and it's non-obvious what you want to do.

  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Sep 18, 2012 9:14 AM in response to C_Jones
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Sep 18, 2012 9:14 AM in response to C_Jones

    @c_jones

    Apple doesn't support what you want to do. A five partition disk cannot have a hybrid MBR produced for it, by Apple's tools. (You say three partition but it's actually five, if you look at your gpt results: EFI System partition, Mac OS, Recovery HD, and two Windows partitions.) Without a hybrid MBR, Windows will not boot on Apple hardware (unless you find the EFI hacks to get it to boot native EFI instead of with the CSM).

     

    Further, having two disks with Windows on it seems difficult: Apple's CSM (legacy BIOS) blindly loads bootloader code from the first available disk it finds, and there is no BIOS setup UI like on real PC's to choose a boot disk.

     

    I don't understand why you have so many partitions anyway, they seem to be unnecessary, and causing you more difficulty.

  • by jupe699,

    jupe699 jupe699 Sep 18, 2012 9:32 AM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 18, 2012 9:32 AM in response to Christopher Murphy

    i'm sorry i think i pasted info from an external drive as well.

     

    let me re-paste the information

    host-178-21-55-151:~ jupe69$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

     

     

    WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss

    or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your

    typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information.

     

     

    To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.

     

     

    Password:

    gpt show: disk0: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168

    gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

    gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

    gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167

           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  1462890624      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

      1463300264     1269544      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

      1464569808          48        

      1464569856   488953856      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

      1953523712        1423        

      1953525135          32         Sec GPT table

      1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

    host-178-21-55-151:~ jupe69$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

    Disk: /dev/disk0          geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 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 - 1462890624] HFS+       

    3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [1463300264 -    1269544] Darwin Boot

    4: 0B 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [1464569856 -  488953856] Win95 FAT-32

     

    this is what i can see. I have tried numerous times to install windows 7 again. Every time i run bootcamp and it creates the partition after restart i get the No bootable device error. If you have any idea what might be going on i would really appreciate it. Also if you need any other information i would gladly provide it.

    Thanks for your time.

  • by Christopher Murphy,

    Christopher Murphy Christopher Murphy Sep 18, 2012 9:56 AM in response to jupe699
    Level 3 (555 points)
    Sep 18, 2012 9:56 AM in response to jupe699

    @jupe699

    The external devices matter. The Boot Camp instructions make it clear you can't have multiple disks connected when doing using Boot Camp or when installing Windows. Disconnect all of the external disks and try again.

     

    The other thing you can answer is if any of your external disks also have Windows installed? Or if you attempted to install Windows on an external disk?

     

    People who do this have all sorts of problems like what you're describing, although some people manage to get multiple installations of Windows on multiple disks to work. I don't know how because I haven't been able to reproduce a working multiple Windows install, due to limitations with Apple hardware which does not have a configurable BIOS setup with which to choose a specific boot disk. Apple hardware blindly loads the first Windows bootloader it finds, which might be an internal disk (usually the case) but might pick a broken external bootloader and cause the error you're encountering.

  • by jupe699,

    jupe699 jupe699 Sep 18, 2012 9:59 AM in response to Christopher Murphy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 18, 2012 9:59 AM in response to Christopher Murphy

    Hi,

     

    yes i have tried it without the external disks connected. Also they don't have an OS on them at all. It's just time machine and storage.

    I am trying to install windows from an external dvd though. My superdrive is not reading dvd's any more, only empty DVD+R. I don't know if this has anything to do with it. As far as i know this is the only difference since i last successfully installed win7 and the fact that i was on Snow Leopard.

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