Bootcamp not bootable after shrinking Macintosh HD partition

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Bootcamp not bootable after shrinking Macintosh HD partition

Hello. I've had bootcamp installed and working flawlessly for over two years, but I needed some more space on my Windows partition. I shrank the Macintosh HD partition to be able to create a new partition which with I merged with the Windows partition. Windows worked fine after this, but the Macintosh HD partition wouldn't boot or show at the boot menu. I used the recovery tool in the Mac's recovery partition to verify and repair the Macintosh HD partition, which didn't succeed. It pretty much said I had to backup my files and reformat etc. Suddenly today, it was the other way around. The Macintosh HD partition did show on the boot menu and booted fine, but the Windows partition didn't show on the boot menu, but here's the weird part: the temporary partition I created to merge with the Windows partition showed up as a separate partition again (even though it is merged with the original Windows partition). Anyway, I followed the steps of this fix: Re: Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition and both partitions (Windows now showing as one partition) showed up on the boot menu, but when trying to boot Windows it showed a black screen with a blinking hypen, not able to boot. I booted from the USB stick I used to install Windows 7 to use the system startup repair tool, but it said that it could not fix the issue automatically because (in the log) the "boot manager is missing or corrupt". Please note that with the fix: Re: Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition I did it to the original partition disk0s5 first, and then also to the temporary partition disk0s4 after to see if that was the problem. I've spent so many hours on this now, that I just want to do the easiest option which is to delete the Windows partitions and recreate Bootcamp, but I'm not able to do anything with the greyed out partitions in Disk Utility.

disk0s1: I guess one of the recovery partitions of OSX (?)
Macintosh HD: Is working fine right now.

win new: the temporary partition which I merged with disk0s5.

disk0s5: Original Bootcamp/Windows partition.

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.4), Windows 7 64-bit

Posted on Dec 3, 2015 8:02 AM

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Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 3, 2015 9:50 AM in response to ebjorno

If you want to remove the remnants of Windows, then the simplest and safest method to get your Mac back is

1. Backup OSX and all your files - Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac - Apple Support .

2. Boot into Internet Recovery (Command+Opt+R) - OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support .

3. Click on Utilties -> Disk Utility and Erase your internal whole disk.

4. Restore OSX and your files - Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac - Apple Support .

This requires a separate external disk which can accommodate TM backup - Backup disks you can use with Time Machine - Apple Support .

Windows partition should not be expanded or shrunk using third-party tools, because they do not understand who the Windows installation is setup in most cases. This is not officially supported by Apple.

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Answer 2

ebjorno Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 3, 2015 2:52 PM in response to Loner T

Thanks for your reply! I was hoping it was possible to remove all traces of Windows without formatting my whole SSD, but if this is the only option then I will go ahead with it.

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Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 3, 2015 3:02 PM in response to ebjorno

It is not the only option. Before your Nuke-and-Pave, let us look at what the current state is and whether it can be salvaged.

Can you post the output of the following OSX Terminal commands?

diskutil list

diskutil cs list

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

The "sudo" commands will prompt for your password, and it will not be echoed back. You may also see a warning about improper use of "sudo" and potential data loss due to "abuse" of the command.

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Answer 4

ebjorno Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 3, 2015 3:10 PM in response to Loner T

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.3 GB disk0

1: Apple_HFS 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 296.5 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Apple_HFS win new 52.4 GB disk0s4

5: Microsoft Basic Data 82.4 GB disk0s5

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Answer 5

ebjorno Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 3, 2015 3:12 PM in response to ebjorno

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.3 GB disk0

1: Apple_HFS 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 296.5 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Apple_HFS win new 52.4 GB disk0s4

5: Microsoft Basic Data 82.4 GB disk0s5

gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=500277790720; sectorsize=512; blocks=977105060

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

gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 977105059

start size index contents

0 1 PMBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

409640 579054944 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

579464584 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

580734120 102400000 4 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

683134120 133000024

816134144 160970752 5 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

977104896 131

977105027 32 Sec GPT table

977105059 1 Sec GPT header

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 60821/255/63 [977105060 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

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

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

1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 977105059] <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

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Answer 6

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 7, 2015 10:41 AM in response to ebjorno

Can you use El Capitan has deleted my bootcamp windows partition as a reference, download Testdisk and GPT Fdisk and start a Testdisk scan and run a Quick search?

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