Windows Fails to Load After Upgrade to Mavericks

Question

Windows Fails to Load After Upgrade to Mavericks

Related topic:

https://discussions.apple.com/activity?streamSource=connections

I'm a little late to this party, but hoping to find some help. I can see my WindowsXP Pro partition on the desktop, but after upgrading to Mavericks it won't fully start up. I'll get the usual screens, then the XP loading screen with the blue loading animation. After about 5 passes of the blue thing, it will hesitate and flash a blue screen so fast, that it took me several attempts to snap a photo so I could read it. "Unmountable_Boot_Volume" is the error. It then says to follow these steps... but cuts off and reboots.

One thing of note is that Parallels 10 uses the same XP virtual machine and boots just fine, so I figure XP can't be all that messed up. Maybe a driver issue, not sure. Does Mavericks not support XP? I'm open to Windows 7, but I'd like to backup some stuff first if possible. Maybe I can do that through Parallels?

Below are some details about my setup:

Als-Home-Mac:~ user$ diskutil list

THIS IS AN EXTRA FAT32 DRIVE

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *82.0 GB disk0

1: DOS_FAT_32 NEWMAN 82.0 GB disk0s1

THIS IS THE MAVERICKS DRIVE WITH XP PRO PARTITION

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS Big Al Pro 833.6 GB disk1s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk1s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data 165.7 GB disk1s4

*********************************************************

Als-Home-Mac:~ user$ diskutil cs list

No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

*********************************************************

Als-Home-Mac:~ user$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

Password:

gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=81964302336; sectorsize=512; blocks=160086528

gpt show: /dev/disk0: MBR at sector 0

start size index contents

0 1 MBR

1 62

63 160086465 1 MBR part 11

*********************************************************

Als-Home-Mac:~ user$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 9964/255/63 [160086528 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

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

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

1: 0B 0 1 1 - 1023 254 63 [ 63 - 160086465] Win95 FAT-32

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

Posted on Nov 1, 2014 4:30 PM

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Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Nov 1, 2014 6:21 PM in response to Alex Campuzano1

Can you re-execute the last two commands with disk1 instead of disk0?

Parallels has its own BIOS layer, so Windows working under Parallels implies the XP filesystem is intact, but the Bootloader/Manager are corrupted for some reason. Both Mavericks and Yosemite have some issues in rearranging partitions and it sometimes leads to problems. If you have a Bootcamp installation from a previous OSX version, it will continue to work in later OSX versions, even though you may not be able to install a new copy of the same Windows version under newer versions of OSX/Bootcamp.

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Answer 2

Nov 1, 2014 6:56 PM in response to Loner T

You mean to run this command but with a 1 at the end like this?...

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk1

-bash: user$: command not found

Same result for the other command:

Als-Home-Mac:~ user$ user$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk1

-bash: user$: command not found

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Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Nov 1, 2014 7:00 PM in response to Alex Campuzano1

You have an extra "user$" due to cut/paste. 😉

Triple click on the following line and use Command+C to copy and Command+V to paste in Terminal window.

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk1

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Answer 4

Nov 1, 2014 7:02 PM in response to Loner T

Hey lookey here, now it works. By the way, I appreciate your help! 🙂

Als-Home-Mac:~ user$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk1

Password:

gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168

gpt show: /dev/disk1: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167

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 1628219568 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1628629208 1269544 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1629898752 323624960 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

1953523712 1423

1953525135 32 Sec GPT table

1953525167 1 Sec GPT header

*******************************

Als-Home-Mac:~ user$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk1

Disk: /dev/disk1 geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 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 - 1628219568] HFS+

3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1628629208 - 1269544] Darwin Boot

*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1629898752 - 323624960] HPFS/QNX/AUX

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Answer 5

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Nov 1, 2014 7:30 PM in response to Alex Campuzano1

No worries. The GPT and MBR look good.

1. What year/mac model do you have?

2. What OS did you upgrade from?

3. Please post the output of (this displays the NTFS header from the Windows partition and should contain "R.NTFS" string in the first line).

sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk1s4 count=1 2>/dev/null | hexdump -C

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Answer 6

Nov 1, 2014 7:40 PM in response to Loner T

Mac Pro 3,1

Quad-Core Intel Xeon

2.8 GHz

Upgraded from 10.6.8, but I tried unsuccessfully to upgrade to Lion first. That went all screwy but was able to go all the way to Mavericks instead. Proobably where things got messed up. I don't remember exactly how I fixed it. I didn't think I could go that current with this hardware.

Als-Home-Mac:~ user$ sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk1s4 count=1 2>/dev/null | hexdump -C

Password:

00000000 eb 52 90 4e 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00 |.R.NTFS .....|

00000010 00 00 00 00 00 f8 00 00 3f 00 ff 00 00 48 26 61 |........?....H&a|

00000020 00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 ff 1f 4a 13 00 00 00 00 |..........J.....|

00000030 00 00 0c 00 00 00 00 00 ff a1 34 01 00 00 00 00 |..........4.....|

00000040 f6 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 cf 33 84 9c 53 84 9c d2 |.........3..S...|

00000050 00 00 00 00 fa 33 c0 8e d0 bc 00 7c fb b8 c0 07 |.....3.....|....|

00000060 8e d8 e8 16 00 b8 00 0d 8e c0 33 db c6 06 0e 00 |..........3.....|

00000070 10 e8 53 00 68 00 0d 68 6a 02 cb 8a 16 24 00 b4 |..S.h..hj....$..|

00000080 08 cd 13 73 05 b9 ff ff 8a f1 66 0f b6 c6 40 66 |...s......f...@f|

00000090 0f b6 d1 80 e2 3f f7 e2 86 cd c0 ed 06 41 66 0f |.....?.......Af.|

000000a0 b7 c9 66 f7 e1 66 a3 20 00 c3 b4 41 bb aa 55 8a |..f..f. ...A..U.|

000000b0 16 24 00 cd 13 72 0f 81 fb 55 aa 75 09 f6 c1 01 |.$...r...U.u....|

000000c0 74 04 fe 06 14 00 c3 66 60 1e 06 66 a1 10 00 66 |t......f`..f...f|

000000d0 03 06 1c 00 66 3b 06 20 00 0f 82 3a 00 1e 66 6a |....f;. ...:..fj|

000000e0 00 66 50 06 53 66 68 10 00 01 00 80 3e 14 00 00 |.fP.Sfh.....>...|

000000f0 0f 85 0c 00 e8 b3 ff 80 3e 14 00 00 0f 84 61 00 |........>.....a.|

00000100 b4 42 8a 16 24 00 16 1f 8b f4 cd 13 66 58 5b 07 |.B..$.......fX[.|

00000110 66 58 66 58 1f eb 2d 66 33 d2 66 0f b7 0e 18 00 |fXfX..-f3.f.....|

00000120 66 f7 f1 fe c2 8a ca 66 8b d0 66 c1 ea 10 f7 36 |f......f..f....6|

00000130 1a 00 86 d6 8a 16 24 00 8a e8 c0 e4 06 0a cc b8 |......$.........|

00000140 01 02 cd 13 0f 82 19 00 8c c0 05 20 00 8e c0 66 |........... ...f|

00000150 ff 06 10 00 ff 0e 0e 00 0f 85 6f ff 07 1f 66 61 |..........o...fa|

00000160 c3 a0 f8 01 e8 09 00 a0 fb 01 e8 03 00 fb eb fe |................|

00000170 b4 01 8b f0 ac 3c 00 74 09 b4 0e bb 07 00 cd 10 |.....<.t........|

00000180 eb f2 c3 0d 0a 41 20 64 69 73 6b 20 72 65 61 64 |.....A disk read|

00000190 20 65 72 72 6f 72 20 6f 63 63 75 72 72 65 64 00 | error occurred.|

000001a0 0d 0a 4e 54 4c 44 52 20 69 73 20 6d 69 73 73 69 |..NTLDR is missi|

000001b0 6e 67 00 0d 0a 4e 54 4c 44 52 20 69 73 20 63 6f |ng...NTLDR is co|

000001c0 6d 70 72 65 73 73 65 64 00 0d 0a 50 72 65 73 73 |mpressed...Press|

000001d0 20 43 74 72 6c 2b 41 6c 74 2b 44 65 6c 20 74 6f | Ctrl+Alt+Del to|

000001e0 20 72 65 73 74 61 72 74 0d 0a 00 00 00 00 00 00 | restart........|

000001f0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 83 a0 b3 c9 00 00 55 aa |..............U.|

00000200

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Answer 7

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Nov 1, 2014 8:04 PM in response to Alex Campuzano1

The introduction of Recovery HD has caused quite a few issues. Your GPT/MBR are synced, there is an NTFS header. The XP installation may need Repair. Please see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654 .

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Answer 8

Nov 1, 2014 9:43 PM in response to Loner T

Well, I installed the Recovery Console from my original CD and selected it from the menu screen. This brought up the blue screen with the "Unmountable_Boot_Volume" error. Tried the safe mode, but no deal. I'm clueless on how to troubleshoot Windows. I barely know how to do it on the Mac side, since OSX doesn't break very often.

I can still boot into XP via Parallels, just not the Recovery Console.

Now what?

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Answer 9

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Nov 2, 2014 5:10 AM in response to Alex Campuzano1

This is the only "Guided" tool that I would recommend for your XP recovery - https://neosmart.net/wiki/bootcfg/. This may be a commercial tool. Please check it out and decide how you want proceed.

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Answer 10

Nov 2, 2014 5:30 AM in response to Loner T

Looks like bootcfg is part of the Recovery Console, but I can't boot into the console. Can I boot from the XP disc and run Recovery Console from there? I'm sure it will be much slower, but as long as it works. There is also a link to a commercial app called EasyRE.

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Answer 11

Nov 2, 2014 6:20 AM in response to Alex Campuzano1

OK, so I was able to run the Recovery Console from the install CD. I managed to figure out how to get to the commands and ran Fixmbr, but nothing changed. Do you have recommendations what to do from the Console before I just give us and wipe everything and start over?

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Answer 12

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Nov 2, 2014 7:45 AM in response to Alex Campuzano1

If you have bootcfg.exe you should try the steps in NeoSmart link.

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Answer 13

Nov 2, 2014 10:05 AM in response to Loner T

SUCCESS! The bootcfg did the trick with the /rebuild command. Thank you so much for all the help.

A couple of slightly off-topic questions, if I ever wanted to upgrade to Windows 7, would I have to wipe it clean and start over or is it possible to install over the existing XP and keep the files intact?

A MacBook Pro with Yosemite with NO bootcamp. Am I able to add Boot Camp as long as I have enough free space?

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Answer 14

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Nov 2, 2014 10:18 AM in response to Alex Campuzano1

Wonderful.

1. My recommendation would be to do a clean W7 install. An Upgrade is possible, but will cause more grief. You may want to collect all your non-OS files in a folder structure under say Documents, back it up, and restore after a W7 clean install.

2. Yes, you can add Bootcamp to Yosemite, but in most cases, you get one chance and if it fails, it causes grief. Take a TM backup of your Yosemite before you bootcamp. If it fails, wipe the internal drive, restore from TM and start bootcamp over.

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