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randalltrini Author

Level 1

8 points

Repair Boot Camp Partition

Dear Team,

I have a problem where after restoring my OSX installation to a new drive after crash, my bootcamp is not working. I get an error:

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

It is also not showing up in the OSX boot loader although Startup Disk control panel is seeing it.

My stats are: Macbook pro 13", early 2011, 8G RAM, the new 500G drive is installed in the optical bay via OWC data doubler, while the old original 320G mac drive is in the main hard drive bay.

I first tried to use bootcamp assistant to do a fresh install with the intention to restore an EASEUS backup. However after the drive was prepared and the mac rebooted to install windows, the windows install disc would not boot. I then decided re-installed Win7 to the bootcamp partition by restoring an EASUS backup by taking the drive out of the macbook pro and using a Windows PC to restore. I also tried to convert from a FAT32 file format which disk utility had done under OSX, to NTFS by using the command prompt conversion under Win7. That conversion process resulted in a cyclic redundancy error, even though the BOOTCAMP partition was showing up in disk utility as NTFS after I put back in the drive. By the way I did the NTFS conversion before restoring the backup.

Finally, when I restored the EASEUS backup, the drive got renamed from BOOTCAMP to Untitled even though I specified BOOTCAMP.

I saw in this post as commented by Christopher Murphy, to run:

sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

The results are as follows:

Randalls-MacBook-Pro:~ randalld$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0

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

gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR 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 MBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

409640 625484576 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

625894216 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

627163752 13848

627177600 323883008 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

951060608 25712527

976773135 32 Sec GPT table

976773167 1 Sec GPT header

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 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 - 625484576] HFS+

3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 625894216 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

4: 0C 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 627177600 - 323883008] Win95 FAT32L

Can someone please help?

MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

Posted on Jul 19, 2014 7:55 AM

20 replies

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Aug 27, 2014 2:33 PM in response to randalltrini

A regular Windows Install disk should work.

randalltrini Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 28, 2014 7:33 PM in response to Loner T

OK. Did the 1 thru 5 steps:

Randalls-MacBook-Pro:~ randalld$ sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0

fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory

Enter 'help' for information

fdisk: 1> setpid 4

Starting Ending

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

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

4: 0C 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 627177600 - 323883008] Win95 FAT32L

Partition id ('0' to disable) [0 - FF]: [C] (? for help) 07

fdisk:*1> flag 4

Partition 4 marked active.

fdisk:*1> p

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]

Offset: 0 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 - 625484576] HFS+

3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 625894216 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 627177600 - 323883008] HPFS/QNX/AUX

fdisk:*1> w

Device could not be accessed exclusively.

A reboot will be needed for changes to take effect. OK? [n] y

Writing MBR at offset 0.

However, when I rebooted it started up into normal OSX. Tried using the startup disk route, but just to the flashing cursor now - nothing else. Tried to boot off of a windows startup repair, windows 7 installer - no luck. What am I doing wrong?

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Aug 28, 2014 7:43 PM in response to randalltrini

The hanging cursor means the control has been passed to CSM-BIOS but Windows does not have the boot loader working.

1. Put the Windows Installer media (I assume it is a DVD).

2. In OSX set your Startup Disk to be the Bootcamp partition.

3. Restart

4. It should now boot from the Install Media (because that is the default CSM-BIOS boot sequence).

5. It should allow the DVD to boot and let you select startup repair or a Command Prompt start should let you run bootrec.exe. Please see this link as well - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

randalltrini Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 3, 2014 8:14 AM in response to Loner T

Hey Loner T,

I must be doing something wrong, as both the Windows CD and the repair disk is not biotin when following the above steps. Anything that I could be missing?

Also please note that the CD is inserted into the superdrive which is connected via USB.

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Sep 3, 2014 8:20 AM in response to randalltrini

The last time Windows worked, were all Bootcamp drivers installed? The Windows side has an AppleODDINstaller(32|64).exe which should be installed for supporting the Superdrive.

If you restore the DVD to a USB stick (USB2.0), can you see the USB stick during Power up using the Alt key? If yes, you can use that rather than the Superdrive, if the drivers of the ODD are unavailable.

Repair Boot Camp Partition