Lost boot camp Windows during upgrade to El Capitan

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Level 1

8 points

Lost boot camp Windows during upgrade to El Capitan

I have 24-inch Mid 2007 iMac. I was using Boot Camp so that I could also boot into Windows Vista. I recently upgraded successfully from Mountain Lion to Yosemite. But then I attempted to upgrade to El Capitan, and the upgrade hung in the middle, never to finish. I then restarted my iMac and both Mac and Windows partitions were gone. I was able to use Time Machine to recreate my Yosemite instance, but the Windows partition was still missing. Furthermore, when I try to create a new partition with Boot Camp, , I get an error that says "the startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition." How do I recreate my WIndows partition (I do have a backup) and my current Yosemite partition.

Posted on Dec 15, 2015 7:58 AM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,534 points

Dec 15, 2015 8:07 AM in response to scottieg

I would recommend moving this thread to the Boot Camp partition. Chances are that due to running very outdated MS Windows software you may have a problem however I'm not at all sure about this. My suggestion is to move this to the correct forum where the Boot Camp gurus would be.

Would you like me to ask the moderator to move the thread?

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Answer 2

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 15, 2015 8:33 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Yes, please go ahead and ask the moderator to move to the Bootcamp section. Thank you for that suggestion.

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Answer 3

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,534 points

Dec 15, 2015 8:40 AM in response to scottieg

please go ahead and ask the moderator to move to the Bootcamp section.

Done. Good luck.

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Answer 4

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 15, 2015 10:13 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Can you post the output of the following 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 5

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 15, 2015 10:22 AM in response to Loner T

Um, how to I get to a command line to execute those commands?

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Answer 6

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 15, 2015 10:26 AM in response to scottieg

Application -> Utilities -> Terminal.

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Answer 7

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 15, 2015 10:51 AM in response to Loner T

Macintosh:~ Scott$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Microsoft Basic Data 248.4 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s4

5: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 250.1 GB disk0s5

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS Gordon Mac backup 499.8 GB disk1s2

Macintosh:~ Scott$ diskutil cs list

No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

Macintosh:~ Scott$

Macintosh:~ Scott$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

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: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 409640 - 485058592] HPFS/QNX/AUX

3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 485468232 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

4: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 486737768 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

Macintosh:~ Scott$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

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

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

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

gpt show: /dev/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 485058592 2 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

485468232 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

486737768 1269536 4 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

488007304 376

488007680 488503304 5 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

976510984 262151

976773135 32 Sec GPT table

976773167 1 Sec GPT header

Macintosh:~ Scott$

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Answer 8

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 15, 2015 12:24 PM in response to scottieg

1. The disk layout is a very strange one.

2. You have two Recovery HD disks. The hung El Capitan upgrade may have left the second recovery HD.

3. If you restored from TM, did you restore Yosemite or Mountain Lion?

4. Usually, the first partition (GPT2) is the OSX version, but your disk has a Microsoft Basic Data as GPT2.

5. GPT5 says it is OSX.

6. Your MBR (Fdisk) output has not entry for a Windows partition any more. It may have been the result of killing the ELC upgrade. Did you get any errors during the ELC upgrade to indicate that it was hung.

7. The number of partitions which are user visible (GPT2 and GPT5) will prevent any further partitioning using BC Assistant.

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Answer 9

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 15, 2015 12:52 PM in response to Loner T

Thank you for those points. When I did the restore, from TM, I restored Yosemite. I suspect that I recored to one of the earlier recovery disks, hence it is not the first partition. And when I was doing the ELC upgrade, no errors. The progress bar just stopped. And stayed stopped all night. Right after a perfect upgrade to Yosemite. Grrr.

Can I somehow start from scratch and remove all the partitions, and reformat the whole thing, reinstall OSX, then BootCamp, then Windows? But all that might be above my skill level.

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Answer 10

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 15, 2015 1:08 PM in response to scottieg

1. Do you still have the 'Grey' restore disks which came with your Mac? Your Mac does not support Internet Recovery ( Computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery - Apple Support ).

2. You can erase you whole internal disk when booted from the Grey disks, and restore from your TM backup and start cleanly.

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Answer 11

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 15, 2015 1:34 PM in response to Loner T

Yes, I do have the original grey disks. Those go all the way back to 10.4 Tiger. If I use them to erase the whole internal disk, will I be able to restore directly to Yosemite with my TM backup, or will I need to step through the various OSX upgrades to get to Yosemite? And thank you for all your help.

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Answer 12

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 15, 2015 3:27 PM in response to scottieg

Do not use the 10.4 disks, because it uses an older partitioning scheme. Do you have the Yosemite Installer saved on your hard drive?

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Answer 13

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 15, 2015 5:14 PM in response to Loner T

Apparently I do not have the Yosemite installer. Do I have any other options?

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Answer 14

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 15, 2015 5:48 PM in response to scottieg

You have a bootable OS X installation. Go to App Store and re-download the Yosemite installer. If you have an external HDD, please install Yosemite on this external disk (USB/Firewire) using How to install OS X on an external drive connected to your Mac - Apple Support . Once you have it installed on this disk, boot from it and test and then we can clean up the internal disk. You may not need your Tiger restore disks. 😉

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Answer 15

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 16, 2015 6:55 AM in response to Loner T

Thank you for that suggestion. It will be a few days before I am able to try that. I will post an update then.

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