Cannot Boot Vista SP2 on Mavericks 10.9.3

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Level 1

10 points

Cannot Boot Vista SP2 on Mavericks 10.9.3

Hi,

I have an older mid-2007 MacBook Pro 2.2GHz running Mavericks 10.9.3. I can no longer boot into my Windows Vista Service Pack 2 partion. The Vista partition does not show up if I hold the "option" key during boot. If I try to boot directly to the Vista partition I get a "

No bootable device --- insert boot disk and press any key

error. The odd thing is that if I use Parallels 8 and a Vista Bootcamp Virtual Machine, the Windows OS boots fine. I think it is a problem with the bootloader of some sort. I also have trouble marking the Windows partition active using DISKPART in Windows. Apparently GPT disks cannot be marked active. See this screen for partition layout; it is output of diskutil list

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 250.0 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 249.2 GB disk0s4

Is there any way to set the BOOTCAMP partition active and start booting from it? Thanks for your help.

Mike

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

Posted on May 22, 2014 2:09 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

May 22, 2014 2:14 PM in response to fourwheelin

Bootcamp 5 is installed with Mavericks and only Win 7 and higher is supported.

Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Enterprise versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8 are not supported.

Boot Camp 5.1- Frequently asked questions

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Answer 2

fourwheelin Author

Level 1

10 points

May 22, 2014 2:18 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy,

I am not running Bootcamp 5; I think it is Bootcamp 3.2 off of a Snow Leopard disk. But thank you for your help.

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

May 22, 2014 2:22 PM in response to fourwheelin

Are you sure? It would have been replaced with 5.x when you first installed Mavericks. I assume you mean that you replace it with the one from your Snow Leopard DVD?

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Answer 4

fourwheelin Author

Level 1

10 points

May 22, 2014 3:01 PM in response to Kappy

Hi Kappy,

Nearly 100% certain. I formatted the disk via Disk Utility, installed Mavericks via a USB key I created previously (remember this is an OLD 2007 MacBook Pro that is not capable of Internet Recovery) and then installed Bootcamp via the Snow Leopard Disk.

But thanks for your help. I think it is related to a partitioning issue; quite similar to this case (see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4144252?tstart=0); I am not sure if some commands would need to be modified in my case to get things working.

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Answer 5

fourwheelin Author

Level 1

10 points

May 25, 2014 7:03 AM in response to fourwheelin

Kappy and others who may be reading this,

The above link has an extra parenthesis in it. It should read https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4144252?tstart=0 .

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Answer 6

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

May 25, 2014 12:18 PM in response to fourwheelin

You cannot boot from Boot Camp partition if there is more than one other partition - OS X. If you have a third partition or if you have tried resizing the Boot Camp partition using Disk Utility, then you will have a problem. This id exclusive of trying to install any unsupported version of Windows which is dependent on the version of Boot Camp used. That should be outlined in the FAQ I linked earlier.

I would check your version of Boot Camp just to be sure you have a version which is compatible with installing Vista or earlier.

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Answer 7

fourwheelin Author

Level 1

10 points

May 25, 2014 5:12 PM in response to fourwheelin

Latest output of diskutil list 12:12 AM UTC 5/26/2014:

Redacted-MacBook-Pro:~ redacted$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0

1: Apple_HFS 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 250.0 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 249.2 GB disk0s4

Redacted-MacBook-Pro:~ redacted$

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Answer 8

fourwheelin Author

Level 1

10 points

May 25, 2014 5:20 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy,

The Bootcamp drivers on the Snow Leopard DVD are version 3.0. All that using the Bootcamp Assistant program does as far as I know is partition the hard drive to accept an OS, it doesn't actually install one AFAIK.

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Answer 9

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 25, 2014 5:27 PM in response to fourwheelin

Please excuse any typos.

1. Can you run fdisk /dev/rdisk0 from a terminal window?

2. There is a gpt command in the other thread that you can look at and provide output.

3. Did Vista stop working after the Mavericks Upgrade?

4. Running Bootcamp Assistant and About should tell you the version number?

5. If Vista was installed prior to Mavericks upgrade, it should continue to work, but a new install of Vista should not be allowed.

6. Was any Disk Utility manipulation of the disk executed?

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Answer 10

fourwheelin Author

Level 1

10 points

May 25, 2014 5:28 PM in response to fourwheelin

I also have a Parallels Bootcamp Virtual machine that was set up in Parallels 8. That has no problem booting Vista. The Windows Vista Partition does not show up if I hold down the option key and try to directly boot it. Previously I could choose to boot Vista using Parallels or not, now I can't.

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Answer 11

fourwheelin Author

Level 1

10 points

May 25, 2014 6:14 PM in response to Loner T

Loner T,

In response to your query, (1) output of sudo fdisk /dev/rdisk0

Disk: /dev/rdisk0 geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

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

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

1: EE 0 0 2 - 1023 255 63 [ 1 - 976773167] <Unknown ID>

2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

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

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

(2) Output of sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

Password:

gpt show: disk0: mediasize=500107862016; sectorsize=512; blocks=976773168

gpt show: disk0: PMBR at sector 0

gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 976773167

start size index contents

0 1 PMBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 16 Pri GPT table

18 409600 1 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

409618 22

409640 488282288 o 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

488691928 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

489961464 8

489961472 486811648 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

976773120 31

976773151 16 Sec GPT table

976773167 1 Sec GPT header

3) Version of Bootcamp Assistant currently installed is 5.1.2. Does this m

4) No Vista did not stop running after the Mavericks install, clean install from a USB key. but oddly enough it may have stopped running after 10.9.3 update was installed.

5) I tried running Disk Utility Repair Disk from the GUI for both the Mac and Windows Partitions. Mac Partition appears to be OK, on Windows the error message was that Disk could not be repaired, and verify and repair disk were grayed out. However, running Chkdsk from the Vista DVD showed no problems on the C: drive.

I hope that this answers your questions. If not, please let me know. Thank you for your help.

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Answer 12

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 25, 2014 7:50 PM in response to fourwheelin

Based on your fdisk output, there is only one large disk, which is GPT and has partitions. Your diskutil output is much closer to your GPT output, but the 209.7 MB partition should be EFI not Apple_HFS.

Your Parallels VM may stil work, because it may be using a virtual disk to point to Bootcamp.

The version of Bootcamp assistant is not the same as the Apple drivers you may have installed after you had built your Vista machine originally. Apple will not allow older Windows version on newer Bootcamp to be clean installed, but if you have a BC built originally on an older version of OSX, it should continue to be supported. All Apple hardware may not have corresponding Windows drivers on say BC 3.x, but they would be supported on BC 5.x.

If you are interested in the BC implementation and CSM-BIOS vs EFI vs UEFI discussion, you can find that there are enough references to it in the original thread you have looked at.

You can use the GPT you have, to rebuild the MBR used to boot Vista. In the original thread, there are examples of fdisk -e interactive mode and commands.

If you notice, fdisk entry #2 and GPT #2, the fdisk entry #3 and GPT #3 and fdisk entry #4 and GPT #4 are the same. The '*' indicates that partition 4 is bootable and that is how OSX switches and allows it to be visible as a bootable entry when you press the ALT key. You are missing entries on the fdisk side. Even if you made the entries by hand you may still see a missing operating system error, which is probably recoverable with Windows repair.

I would also suggest downloading GPT fdisk (the tutorial is here http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/walkthrough.html) which helps quite a bit. Disk Utility changes are notorius for stepping on BC installations and corrupting them. Whether DU corrupted your BC instalation, or 10.9.3 did it, may never be known.

On my machine, the output of fdisk and GPT looks as follows. Please make backups of you data before you make any changes.

Disk: /dev/rdisk0 geometry: 121643/255/63 [1954210120 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 - 1452530904] HFS+

3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1452940544 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1454211072 - 499998720] HPFS/QNX/AUX

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/rdisk0

gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: mediasize=1000555581440; sectorsize=512; blocks=1954210120

gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: Sec GPT at sector 1954210119

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 1452530904 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1452940544 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1454210080 992

1454211072 499998720 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

1954209792 295

1954210087 32 Sec GPT table

1954210119 1 Sec GPT header

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Answer 13

fourwheelin Author

Level 1

10 points

May 28, 2014 2:13 PM in response to Loner T

Loner T,

Thank you for your assistance. You said:

Based on your fdisk output, there is only one large disk, which is GPT and has partitions. Your diskutil output is much closer to your GPT output, but the 209.7 MB partition should be EFI not Apple_HFS.

Based on the above advice, my first order of business was to change the 209.7 MB from Apple_HFS to EFI. I had already downloaded gdisk/GPT fdisk and also have a copy of Testdisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk). But I am not 100% sure the changes "stuck" or were correct. How can I verify

As well, if you have not guessed already, this is my first attempt at editing a hybrid GPT table via Mac (I am essentially a Windows guy much more comfortable with DISKPART, but ANY partition operation can lead to severe data loss.) With that caveat in mind, though, the basic steps I need to complete are:

Backup current partition data somewhere
Determine which partitions go into the new table
Create new hybrid GPT Partition Table
Set Windows partition as bootable and active
Verify the results

I am not sure what the answer to Step 2 should be. Also if I have the steps incorrectly, or the table isn't really a hybrid GPT table, please let me know. Thanks so much for your help.

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Answer 14

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 28, 2014 2:39 PM in response to fourwheelin

You can check EFI by running diskutil list. Here is an example...

diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 743.7 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 256.0 GB disk0s4

GPT fdisk should let you backup the current GPT. The "b" option in the following menu. I would also recommend putting this backup file on an external USB drive for safety.

sudo gdisk

Password:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.9

Type device filename, or press <Enter> to exit: /dev/rdisk0

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their

partition table automatically reloaded!

Partition table scan:

MBR: hybrid

BSD: not present

APM: not present

GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): ?

b back up GPT data to a file

c change a partition's name

d delete a partition

i show detailed information on a partition

l list known partition types

n add a new partition

o create a new empty GUID partition table (GPT)

p print the partition table

q quit without saving changes

r recovery and transformation options (experts only)

s sort partitions

t change a partition's type code

v verify disk

w write table to disk and exit

x extra functionality (experts only)

? print this menu

Here is a very good post on creating a Hybrid MBR...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5641066

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Answer 15

fourwheelin Author

Level 1

10 points

May 30, 2014 1:17 PM in response to Loner T

Loner T,

Thank you so much for the information and being so patient with a newbie. Unfortunately I think even changing the partition type is proving to be an issue, and I am moving backwards! Here is the output of diskutil list, modified just slightly so that my actual name is redacted, but all else is intact:

Redacteds-MacBook-Pro:~ redacted$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0

1: Apple_HFS 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 250.0 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 249.2 GB disk0s4

Shouldn't partition 1, highlighted in red be EFI? To effect such a change, I ran GPT fdisk; here is the dialogue from the command line.

redacteds-MacBook-Pro:~ redacted$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk0

Password:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their

partition table automatically reloaded!

Partition table scan:

MBR: protective

BSD: not present

APM: not present

GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): t

Partition number (1-4): 1

Current type is 'Apple HFS/HFS+'

Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = AF00): L

0700 Microsoft basic data 0c01 Microsoft reserved 2700 Windows RE

3000 ONIE boot 3001 ONIE config 4100 PowerPC PReP boot

4200 Windows LDM data 4201 Windows LDM metadata 7501 IBM GPFS

7f00 ChromeOS kernel 7f01 ChromeOS root 7f02 ChromeOS reserved

8200 Linux swap 8300 Linux filesystem 8301 Linux reserved

8302 Linux /home 8400 Intel Rapid Start 8e00 Linux LVM

a500 FreeBSD disklabel a501 FreeBSD boot a502 FreeBSD swap

a503 FreeBSD UFS a504 FreeBSD ZFS a505 FreeBSD Vinum/RAID

a580 Midnight BSD data a581 Midnight BSD boot a582 Midnight BSD swap

a583 Midnight BSD UFS a584 Midnight BSD ZFS a585 Midnight BSD Vinum

a800 Apple UFS a901 NetBSD swap a902 NetBSD FFS

a903 NetBSD LFS a904 NetBSD concatenated a905 NetBSD encrypted

a906 NetBSD RAID ab00 Apple boot af00 Apple HFS/HFS+

af01 Apple RAID af02 Apple RAID offline af03 Apple label

af04 AppleTV recovery af05 Apple Core Storage be00 Solaris boot

bf00 Solaris root bf01 Solaris /usr & Mac Z bf02 Solaris swap

bf03 Solaris backup bf04 Solaris /var bf05 Solaris /home

bf06 Solaris alternate se bf07 Solaris Reserved 1 bf08 Solaris Reserved 2

bf09 Solaris Reserved 3 bf0a Solaris Reserved 4 bf0b Solaris Reserved 5

c001 HP-UX data c002 HP-UX service ea00 Freedesktop $BOOT

eb00 Haiku BFS ed00 Sony system partitio ed01 Lenovo system partit

Press the <Enter> key to see more codes: L

ef00 EFI System ef01 MBR partition scheme ef02 BIOS boot partition

fb00 VMWare VMFS fb01 VMWare reserved fc00 VMWare kcore crash p

fd00 Linux RAID

Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = af00): ef00

Changed type of partition to 'EFI System'

Command (? for help): q

Redacteds-MacBook-Pro:~ redacted$

By the above dialog, one would assume that the partition type would have changed. Then I promptly rebooted the machine. Am I missing something stupid simple here that's not causing the writes to be committed to disk? Do I have to use single user mode, or log in as root?

Thanks again for your help and patience

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