HELP! Bootcamp Messed Up!

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Level 1

15 points

HELP! Bootcamp Messed Up!

Hey guys

So I've tried to use Bootcamp to dual boot my OS X and Windows 7. Everything went fine until I was creating the parition, it accidently created at 20GB before I could change anything and then my Mac restarted itself and went into the Windows 7 setup process, that was cool until it came to the partitions section. There are only 2 partitions on my Hard Drive, the first one is my Mac Partition and the second is what would be my windows partition. But when I went to select a partition there was 4 partitions listed... so I tried to exit the installer go back into OS X to see what had gone on and now it's coming up saying no bootable media found. Please Help!

Rob

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10), Virgin Media Super Hub

Posted on Aug 2, 2015 5:31 PM

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Answer 1

BigGee42

Level 2

319 points

Aug 2, 2015 9:20 PM in response to Rash-Fires

4 partitions sounds about right. Windows sees the different disk partitions very differently from OS X. There actually are 4 partitions - the OS X primary, the OS X Recovery, the Windows partition and I believe the 4th is created for Windows compatibility.

The good news is your Mac isn't screwed, you've just cancelled the Bootcamp process part way through. Which is probably the smart decision if you're unsure about what to do.

The reason you get this error is that as part of the setup, the newly created Windows partition is set as the default boot device.

Since you cancelled the process there is no valid Windows partition to boot from. To get back to OS X you need to tell the Mac to boot from the OS X partition again. Easy peasy:

Switch off the Mac, then switch it on and hold down the Alt key after the "bong" tone. This should present you with the available boot drives. Select OS X to start the Mac normally.

Once your back into OS X, go to system preferences > Startup disk and select the OS X partition to boot from. This restores the boot drive to normal.

Go back to the bootcamp utility and start again by removing the Windows Partition and restoring it to one big drive again.

You can now start again. However, you need to carefully read the instructions before proceeding.

The bootcamp instructions tell you which partition to select. It should be named BOOTCAMP. Don't get it wrong or your Mac will be goosed!

Finally, you need more than 20GB for Windows 7. It needs to be at least 40GB.

Good luck!

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