Q: Ran 'repair disk' from disk utility, now unable to boot into win8 partition
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Feb 25, 2014 9:25 AMby shiftynick,Actually I had been booting back and forth between OS X/Win8 for a while after the resize and after upgrading to 10.9.1. The problem didn't start until I tried to run Parallels using the Bootcamp partition for my VM (which also used to work) and it gave me an error and suggested I run Repair Disk. That's when it all went to crap.
I'll see what I can find with testdisk.
And I actually was getting "Use one to protect more partitions?", even after answering Y to "Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N):"
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Feb 25, 2014 11:19 AMby Christopher Murphy,HelpfulAnd I actually was getting "Use one to protect more partitions?", even after answering Y to "Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N):"
This doesn't make sense. There are only 4 primary partition entries possible in the MBR. If you answer Y to this question, MBR 1 is used. If you choose to put GPT partitions 2 3 4 into the MBR, all four are used and then you don't get the Use one to protect more partitions? question for two reasons: There's no more room for them in the MBR, and you only have 4 partitions in the GPT anyway. I'd be curious what happens if you answer yes to the protect more partitions question, what it thinks it's going to add and where it puts them. It could be a bug or it could indicate other problems.
If you cancel out of gdisk with control-c, and then relaunch it, do you get any error messages? If you issue the v command (for verify) from the main menu, what do you get?
Since a. you've posted your MBR and GPT to the forum and hence effectively have a backup, and b. your MBR is the same as your GPT and therefore you don't even need a backup of the MBR; I'd consider creating a protective MBR and overwriting the GPT. Use gdisk's expert menu, x, and then create a new protective mbr, n, and then write out this GPT, w, and reboot before starting with testdisk.
If there are any weird GPT/MBR issues then you'll might get superfluous results from testdisk that aren't actually useful. Later, you'll create a new hybrid MBR anyway, so there's no harm in removing it now in favor of the standard protective MBR.
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Feb 25, 2014 11:43 AMby shiftynick,If you look at the original MBR there was a gap between the 3rd partition sector end and 4th partitions sector start. The size of this gap matched the changes i made with Mini Tool to the MBR. So that's what I think is causing the
Use one to protect more partitions? problems.
Right now I'm using testdisk to at least backup all of my data on the bootcamp partition, if I decide to start fresh.
I'll take a look at your latest suggestions too.
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Feb 25, 2014 4:29 PMby shiftynick,As an update, I was able to get the correct start/end sectors using testdisk and now have the option to boot the win8 partition. It doesn't have the 'missing operating system' message and actually tries to boot. However i get a winload.exe error message and it basically says i need to use some sort of recovery.
I am trying to figure out how to do this now. I created a bootable win8 installation USB, but have had no luck with it.
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Feb 25, 2014 5:25 PMby Number88,HelpfulDid you create a new hybrid MBR with gdisk? If so
Boot from the Windows 8 USB and at the install now screen do a shift + F10 which should bring a command prompt window up.
In that window try entering these one at a time
bootrec /fixmbr - should report ran ok
bootrec /fixboot - same as above
bootrec /rebuildbcd - this should scan your drive for a Windows installation. It should find 1 and then ask you whether you would like to add it to the menu - answer Y
Reboot and see if Windows now boots.
