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Bootcamp Partition is broken after resize

Hi everyone, while I have read threads from people with a similar problem, I believe this is a special case.

My setup:
MacBook Pro 5,3 (mid 2009)
Mavericks, Bootcamp 5

1 SSD with OS X and other mac stuff in hard disk bay
1 HDD in optical drive bay with two partitions, one MacExtended (with just my precious data) and one NTFS as Bootcamp partition with Windows 7 Professional.

(Therefor no internal DVD drive + my external DVD drive is broken)


Here's what I did:

I shrinked the MacEx partition of my HDD by using Disk Utility,

started Windows and used MiniTool Partition Wizard to expand the NTFS partition,

had to reboot windows to do the partitioning process,

it rebooted windows again, I got an error booting.


This is the error I get when I try to boot into Windows:

(First something along the lines "Failed to boot, repair your partition inserting your Windows 7 DVD..blahblah")

File: \boot\BCD

Status: 0xc0000225

Info: An error ocurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data.




Normally I would do exactly what it say's on the screen and recover using the DVD. But as you know by now, I don't have a DVD drive at all.

Because it was a PITA to install it, simply reinstalling Windows is my last option (Older MacBooks like mine won't boot a USB-stick or external drive with Windows, so I had to get all whacky-hacky with an external HDD that I made into a Windows 7 installer in Paralells, then plugged it in internally so it would be recognised by the minimalistic Apple BIOS).

I've done quite a bit of research already but I am left uncertain:
Some sources suggest to install rEFIt and use it's partition tool to sync the ominous GPT/MBR hybrid thing.
Other Sources have destroyed their Mac partition tables by doing that. I'd like to avoid destruction.

But maybe this hard drive armageddon only applies to systems with just one shared hard disk? (Here's hoping)


Any suggestions are very welcome.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2009), OS X Mavericks (10.9), SSD & HDD in optical bay

Posted on Dec 17, 2013 12:27 PM

Reply
6 replies

Dec 17, 2013 12:33 PM in response to Don_Green

There are only two ways to resize a Boot Camp partition properly.


1. Use Boot Camp Assistant to remove the existing partition then create a new one of the desired size.

2. Purchase and use the third-party utility, Camptune X 10.4.


Anything else damages the partition scheme requiring the entire drive be re-partitioned from scratch back to a single volume.


1. You cannot resize a Boot Camp partition with Disk Utility like a normal drive.

2. You cannot have more than two partitions on a Boot Camp managed drive.

3. You cannot re-partition or resize the drive with Windows' utilities.

Dec 17, 2013 6:40 PM in response to Don_Green

If you haven't already looked, try looking at this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4144252. It has been bookmarked by a large number of people and the author helps many to recover from an issue very similar to yours. It is not an easy task, and it has a good bit of risk, so I wouldn't suggest that you even attempt anything else until you have completed a good backup of your partitions.


I would like to add that BootCamp itself does not support multiple storage drives in a portable system, so your configured SSD+HDD would not be a supported environment under BootCamp, unless you have built your own Fusion Drive under MacOS, and then you would be on your own because the Fusion Drive is not officially supported on portable computers either.

Jan 31, 2014 4:53 AM in response to Don_Green

Ok, it's been some time, but I haven't had the time to get to repair my Windows earlier.


Thanks GeekBoy for pointing me to that article. After I did a proper backup I tried creating a new MRB via gdisk, but it did not solve the issue.


In the end I just did a clean format of the partition and reinstalled windows. After everything is up and running now, I've made a backup of it using Winclone Pro, just in case.


I'm not quite sure I understand your comments towards Fusion Drive (I didn't create one) and on these older MacBooks you also can't use a USB installer, because it can't boot windows from USB when it originally came with a SuperDrive.


So how did I install it in the end?

Well I made a new thread for that:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5850752

Bootcamp Partition is broken after resize

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