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Resized partition using Disk Utility and now Windows 7 will not boot

Hi,

Hopefully someone can help me!!

I had previously used Boot Camp to install Windows 7. However, I later realised I had not given myself anywhere near enough disk space as I started using Windows for things I hadn't originally planned on using it for.

Anyway, long story short, to solve the problem I uninstalled some applications on my Mac OSX and used Disk Utility to decrease the size of my Mac partition. My plan was then to reboot to Windows and use a Windows application to increase the size of the Windows partition. However - I coudln't even get that far.

Upon decreasing the size of my Mac partition (succesfully) I restarted my Mac in order to boot to Windows. However, I was greeted with a message along the lines of "unable to boot to Windows please insert boot disk and press any key" (I can't remember the exact message).

I was wondering if anyone knows of any way to restore my Windows partition, retaining all of my previously saved files on my Windows disk. It's probably a long shot, but the thought of losing everything I have been working on for the last few months is a sickening one.

What does give me a bit of hope is that, if I click Boot Camp it seems to recognise that Windows 7 is installed as the option that appears is to uninstall it.

Furthermore, if I view partitions in Disk Utility, a "DISK0S4" is listed. However, it's only at 20gb - if this WAS my BootCamp partition previously, it was originally at something around 60gb (I think - either way, definitely bigger than 20gb!).

On top of this, my current Macintosh HD parition is at 260gb and with the DISK0S4 partition at 20.21gb, there seems to be some space missing... I'm hoping this is the files I've been working on over the last few months!

Anyway, I've done some searching on the net and it *seems* that GPT fdisk *might* be my savour. I've downloaded it but have no idea how to use it and don't plan on playing about with it as I could no doubt do some real damage. If it is likely to solve my problem however, I'm certainly more than capable of being walked through what I need to do.

Please help!

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5), Windows 7, Boot Camp, Partition

Posted on Jun 3, 2013 2:11 PM

18 replies

Oct 29, 2013 3:18 AM in response to Christopher Murphy

The Disk Utility also known as local Disk Management is a basic management tool used to perform disk-related tasks in your PC. The tasks includes, resizing partitions, extending or shrinking system partition, deleting, creating, and formatting partitions, etc. Such tasks are important to change the partition, formatting, etc, of your hard drive, but for that, first it's important to know how to access Disk Utility in Windows 7.

Oct 29, 2013 8:39 AM in response to silhouttejames

Well even more important is that it's totally unsupportable on Macs with OS X to do this, because that utlity has no idea what a hybrid MBR-GPT partition map is. So invariably it only modifies the MBR, causing a mismatch between it and the GPT. And then data loss is imminent because Apple's tools like to force syncronization of the MBR and GPT, which only the MBR is correct if it has recently been manipulated in Windows, yet Apple replaces the MBR with wrong data in the GPT.

So seriously, once you have a Bootcamp'd drive, you need to stay away from partition manipulation with the included Windows or OS X disk utility tools. Only 3rd party products explicitly designed for the non-standard Bootcamp partition scheme can be used.

wertjake

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Nov 1, 2013 11:27 AM in response to Christopher Murphy

Hello Christopher,

I don't mean to invade this thread, but I mistakenly have made the same mistake--I messed with partitions after installing Windows through bootcamp and now it will not work. I have learned my lesson now after reading many of your posts.

I have little to no knowledge about Mac OS, but am "computer savvy." I know you can help me.

If you'd be willing to take a look I would really appreciate it.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5513938

Resized partition using Disk Utility and now Windows 7 will not boot