Bootcamp fails after Yosemite upgrade (Plz help me Loner!)

Some screenshots from my current disk setup

chitowngreeny wrote:

Hi Loner T (and others)...I upgraded to El Capitan last night and as soon as it was complete, I could no longer boot into my Bootcamp partition that contains Windows 10. From reading your previous posts, it seems like there might be a solution after changing the GPT values, but i'm not skilled in identifying the correct values, but can go thru your steps once I know the correct values. An item that also might be a factor...I few months ago I used a third-party partitioning utility to increase the size of the Bootcamp partition (I think it was PartitionMagic)...as soon as I did that I could no longer boot Windows from the Mac Startup Disk option or could see the Bootcamp partition in Disk Utility...the only way I could boot Windows was to restart and hold Alt/Option key. But after the EC upgrade, Windows is not an option when I hold Alt/Option. Here is my output from TeskDisk...let me know if you need any additional screenshots:

Your post got buried in the thread. Can you post a new discussion with relevant output (the usual four commands)?

PS_STI wrote:

Ok, did that.

The effect was completely opposite to what I was expecting: did not get Windows to boot and the Bootcamp partition disappeared again from the list of the Startup Disks in OS X.

Does that mean you Testdisk screens are incorrect?

The Windows Startup Recovery does not work, as it says the disk is "locked".

This can be addressed.

I think I cannot boot from my original Win7 installation disk, as in the meantime I upgraded to Windows 10, so now have a completely different system installed.

If you did not have a working W7, did you upgrade this non-working W7 to W10?

I had backed up my Bootcamp installation using Paragon's Bootcamp Backup software, but it fails to restore from that backup - it seems that the backup itself is ok, but for some reason during the restore procedure the system stops at the stage of trying to create a partition on the destination disk (I am trying to use various external disks).

Paragon has various issues, this being one of them.

I am getting closer and closer to giving up...

I am, too. 😉

First of all thanks that you still have not given up 🙂.

How do you think my Testdisk screens are incorrect? You mean the current one, or the previous ones? Either way: I read more about the El Captain's Disk Utility and it seems that the fact that Bootcamp does not show up there is normal - Disk Utility no longer shows partitions formatted using other file systems, such as NTFS. The Bootcamp disk shows up on every terminal-generate report, though. I cannot see it in the list of the startup disks in the main installation, while I can see it when I boot using a secondary installation on an external drive. I reinstalled El Captain again, did not help.

Re. Startup Recovery being locked - tried to read about it in the net, but did not find a convincing solution.

No, I had upgraded to W10 before the whole problem started. So for some time my W10 worked perfectly after the upgrade. The problem started when I used Bootcamp Assistant to install Apple's Win10 drivers - my function keys had not been not working in W10 etc., so I wanted to have the full set of drivers for my Mac on Win10.

I filed a ticket to Paragon - it seems however their software cannot cope with El Captain and they admitted on their FB that they are swamped with support requests...😟

So - I will be trying. I don't want to format the disk using a Linux distribution, as it seems to be the only solution that might really help, but if Paragon's BCB fails to restore my Win10, then I would have to rebuild it from scratch i.e. Win7 -> Win10. But then I would lose all that I installed in Windows - I bought the Paragon's BCB to be protected from such a situation and it seems this software is not worth a cent... 😠

PS_STI wrote:

How do you think my Testdisk screens are incorrect? You mean the current one, or the previous ones? Either way: I read more about the El Captain's Disk Utility and it seems that the fact that Bootcamp does not show up there is normal - Disk Utility no longer shows partitions formatted using other file systems, such as NTFS. The Bootcamp disk shows up on every terminal-generate report, though. I cannot see it in the list of the startup disks in the main installation, while I can see it when I boot using a secondary installation on an external drive. I reinstalled El Captain again, did not help.

The output used to correct your GPT and MBR were based on Testdisk and directory listings from that configuration. ELC will show BC volumes and will also show them in Preferences. You may have additional issues.

PS_STI wrote:

Re. Startup Recovery being locked - tried to read about it in the net, but did not find a convincing solution.

Please see readonly parts in https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766465(v=ws.10).aspx .

No, I had upgraded to W10 before the whole problem started. So for some time my W10 worked perfectly after the upgrade. The problem started when I used Bootcamp Assistant to install Apple's Win10 drivers - my function keys had not been not working in W10 etc., so I wanted to have the full set of drivers for my Mac on Win10.

Can you describe how installing new drivers could have caused BC partition issues?

I filed a ticket to Paragon - it seems however their software cannot cope with El Captain and they admitted on their FB that they are swamped with support requests...😟

So - I will be trying. I don't want to format the disk using a Linux distribution, as it seems to be the only solution that might really help, but if Paragon's BCB fails to restore my Win10, then I would have to rebuild it from scratch i.e. Win7 -> Win10. But then I would lose all that I installed in Windows - I bought the Paragon's BCB to be protected from such a situation and it seems this software is not worth a cent... 😠

I have stayed away from ELC on any critical machines. I do not see any value in upgrading and trying to resolve such issues. I suggest you go back to Yosemite and Windows 7 and use a second Mac to experiment with ELC. It is strange that Paragon is so reluctant to admit that they have issues.

Ok, I played around with DiskPart.

The command list volume gives me the ouput showing:

Volume # Ltr Label FS Type Size Status Info

Volume 0 Bootcamp NTFS Partition 119GB Healthy hidden

Volume 1 D Removable 0 B No Media

Volume 2 C ESD-USB FAT32 Removable 32 GB Healthy

So the problem shows up here: my 119 GB Bootcamp parition is not assigned a letter during the boot up procedure so I think there is no way it can boot from there. (The 32GB partition is my pendrive being the Windows 10 installation disk).

Using DiskPart I change the drive letter assingments and attributes to:

Volume # Ltr Label FS Type Size Status Info

Volume 0 C Bootcamp NTFS Partition 119GB Healthy hidden

Volume 1 D Removable 0 B No Media

Volume 2 E ESD-USB FAT32 Removable 32 GB Healthy

I also run a command to remove the "readonly" attribute.

After that I am able to e.g. start the procedure to restore windows from the Windows recovery system. I can also run all Windows tools to fix the MBR etc. including:

bootrec /RebuildBcd

bootrec /fixMbr

bootrec /fixboot

bootsect /nt60 SYS

The problem is that once I reboot, all these changes are gone - the system reverts to Bootcamp volume having no drive letter assigned etc.and being not bootable. So we are coming back to the problem being my MBR and its ability to properly identify the Bootcamp partition...

Loner T, your solution saved my Bootcamp partition. Thank you very much!

Cyan007 wrote:

Loner T, your solution saved my Bootcamp partition. Thank you very much!

Excellent. 😎. Please back up OSX and Windows. Use separate external disks, if possible.

Loner T, thanks for all the help you gave me. I ended up wiping my hard drive, doing the OS X internet recovery, reinstalling the OS and then with use of Migration Assistand getting back to the desired state. Of course I had to reinstall Windows, which was pretty painless, so considering how easy it was to get back to the original state I could say I wasted all the hours when I was trying to fix the system. On the other I learned a lot about the OS X and Windows (yes, Windows as well), so it was not a wasted time.

Thanks again!

Please ensure you have good back ups for OSX and Windows. A nuke-and-pave is reasonable, but should be infrequent.

I do my backups regularly - I have been doing them for the last 20 years, keeping second copies off-site etc 😎. Considering how much backups helped me in this situation, I strongly advise everyone reading this thread to do the backups.

I have the exact same problem only difference i can see is i don't have corestorage enabled, im following your guide pretty well and I'm about to do steps 7&8 just want to confirm what numbers to use? please advise. thank you in advance

Would you mind starting a new discussion and posting this information on the new discussion, otherwise it is confusing.

Yes no problem, new here wasn't sure of procedure was. is there a way to tag you so that you are notified when I do ?

I get notified via email. 😉