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

58 replies

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 22, 2015 6:58 PM in response to scottieg

Insert your Windows DVD in the optical drive and ensure it can be read. From System Preferences -> Startup Disk, choose your Bootcamp installation (not the Installer DVD), click on Restart, once the Mac reboots, it should start the installer from the DVD and give you a choice of Install or Repair. Choose Repair.

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 22, 2015 7:24 PM in response to Loner T

Thank you again. But since I am not able to boot into OS X, how can I ensure that the DVD can be read, and where do I get to System Preferences in order to set the startup disk?

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 23, 2015 6:05 AM in response to scottieg

Boot into Recovery Console and insert your DVD. Canyon see the DVD on you desktop? Check Utilities -> Terminal for any new devices.

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 23, 2015 6:39 AM in response to Loner T

Before I insert the DVD and follow your steps, one thing -- if it ends up that I do not see the inserted DVD when I am in the OS X Utilities, how do I eject the disk?

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 23, 2015 7:05 AM in response to scottieg

Either use diskutil eject diskN where diskN is your DVD or press the Eject button on your keyboard.

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 3, 2016 6:52 PM in response to Loner T

Hi Loner T. Now that the holidays are over, I thought I would get back to seeing if I can rectify my issue with your help. I inserted the Windows Vista install disk into the optical drive, but after about a minute, the computer simply ejected the DVD. Also, when I went to try to select the Startup disk from the menu, it did not show the bootcamp install, just the Mac HD OS X 10.10.5 (see screen shot). I'm wondering if it finally might be time for me to make the 100 mile trip to the Apple Store?

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Jan 3, 2016 7:10 PM in response to scottieg

Do you have any third-party NTFS software which allows to you read-write from the OS X side to Windows or vice-a-versa?

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 4, 2016 8:58 AM in response to Loner T

The only third party software I had was MacDrive, which I had gotten some years ago to install on the Windows side, for reading Mac drives. But I can't get to the Windows side at this point.

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Jan 4, 2016 9:15 AM in response to scottieg

If you still have MacDrive installed, can you uninstall temporarily and test?

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 5, 2016 12:06 PM in response to Loner T

Unfortunately the MacDrive app was installed on my Windows environment, and that environment on its partition is inaccessible (or does not even exist any more)..

So it sounds to me that I am out of luck in what I can do myself. Thank you again for all your time and effort in trying to help me, Loner T.

So now I have to hope that an Apple Store will still work on a mid-2007 iMac.

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Jan 5, 2016 12:38 PM in response to scottieg

Can you boot normally into OSX?

scottieg Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 5, 2016 1:10 PM in response to Loner T

I can't boot into OSX, only into that utility. I do have my grey disks that origianlly came with the iMac. Those are for OSX 10.4.10. You had previously advised against my using those, but since I have no other options, perhaps I should? I also have an install disk for 10.6 Snow Leopard. Perhaps I could step through various upgrades, and then finally recreate the Boot Camp partition from scratch.

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Jan 5, 2016 1:15 PM in response to scottieg

Can you install 10.6 on an external disk (a blank external disk would be preferable) through the Utility? Once you have 10.6 installed, Upgrade all the way to the same OSX version on your internal disk.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Lost boot camp Windows during upgrade to El Capitan