Windows partition unbootable after partition resize with mini tool.

Question

Level 1

0 points

Windows partition unbootable after partition resize with mini tool.

Hi Guys,

As you can probably imagine, my approach to this was all a bit cavalier, and I'm paying for it now. I basically reduced the mac partition by about 200gb with disk utility and then tried to reclaim the free space from the windows side using mini tool partition wizard. Upon restart, I get a message in MS-DOS saying that something is wrong and I should use installation DVD to repair the disk. The trouble is, nothing happens when I try to do this and the computer won't respond to any keyboard or mouse inputs. To make matters worse, the backup I thought I had does not exist anymore. I've tried some fixes on this forum, all to no avail, I'm not sure were I'm going wrong. I don't know how unique my situation is but here's the dumps:

I would love to be able to revert to how my sytem was before, with working bootcamp and mac partition. I know I'm pushiong my luck but, being able to properly allocate a bit more space to the bootcamp partition would be nice too. Please help, there are so many files and games on that windows partition that I just can't lose. Many thanks in advance and any help at all would be much appreciated. Thanks again

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Feb 2, 2014 7:18 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Feb 2, 2014 7:56 PM in response to NakedPenguin

The MBR and GPT entries for the Boot Camp volume are the same. The MBR has the right type code and active bit set. So this isn't a partition problem at this point. You'll need to use testdisk on OS X with the full scan to see if it can find a different start/end sector value for Boot Camp than what's in the partition maps. And then you'll need to make those changes in the GPT with gdisk, and then after that use gdisk to make a new hybrid MBR adding partitions 2 3 4 to the MBR, with partition 4 as bootable. So hopefully testdisk finds something that works. And depending on how many times Windows has been installed or resized on this disk since it was totally zero'd, there may be more than one suggestion by test disk. You may have to test them all. I suggest NOT booting Windows. Always boot OS X since that mounts NTFS read only and therefore won't cause additional damage if the choices aren't quite right. And you can get a basic backup of Windows files from the OS X side before jumping into getting Windows booting right.

Reply

Answer 2

Feb 2, 2014 9:00 PM in response to NakedPenguin

You can not use Disk Utility to change the partition sizes on a disk containing a Boot Camp partition. The only tool that you can use to accomplish this is CampTune. Now that you have used Disk Utility you will have to erase and reformat your hard drive. Then reinstall OSx. Then run Boot Camp Assistant again to create a new Boot Camp partition.

Reply