OSXRESERVED not deleted after installing Windows with Bootcamp

1. You can manually delete OSXRESERVED using Disk Utility.

2. VMWare seems to be unable to distinguish between the Installer and the Installed BC. Once you delete OSXRESERVED, it should function normally.

francescmas wrote:

I read on some forums if you delete the OSXRESERVED manually this can make Windows stop working. And then I should re-partition to take this 8GBytes OSXRESERVED space to main OS X system partition...

Anyway I've been talking with Apple support (somebody called Ricardo) and they told me it's normal behavior (??!!!) so it seems to be normal to have two Windows at boot camp (???!!!!)

OSXRESERVED is the replacement for USB Installers on Macs older than 2015. It is not normal to have OSXRESERVED. You can mount the volume and check the files in that partition. It should have $WinPEDriver$, Windows Installer and BC drivers. If you can post a listing, we can verify.

NEW CHAPTER:

I decided to go ahead with VMWARE FUSION and choose the only OSXRESERVED possibility, and it worked... so I mean I can access to WINDOWS 10 original bootcamp as a virtual machine on VMWARE FUSION. SINCE THEN THE WINDOWS 10 HAS SERIOUS PROBLEMS WHEN STARTING FROM BOOTCAMP ALONE (It resets itself after 3-4 minutes... FOREVER).

So now what I have is:

- 60GBytes less of space dedicated to WINDOWS 10.

- 8GBytes less of space dedicated to OSXRESERVED, without use.

- One WINDOWS 10 operating system that ONLY works correctly through VMWARE FUSION...

- One Boot camp with Windows 10 that DOES NOT WORK and RESETS after 3-4 minutes.

The Windows installation is not yet complete under Bootcamp. Can you explain what you mean by 'resets itself'? Does it crash, a blue screen, cannot be booted again, etc.? We can address your issues. Since this is a new installation, use BC Assistant, remove Windows, leave OSXRESERVED as it is, try to re-install Windows and check what happens to OSXRESERVED. If you imported the Windows Installer into VMware Fusion, you may be using a new installation of Windows, not your BC installation. Please verify.

I am hoping LonerT will come to my aid - as to so many here!

I have a Retina 5k 27 inch iMac, running El Capitan 10.11.2 on a Fusion drive.

I used BCA to create a 99Gb partition to install Windows 10 (using my Windows 8 license key) which seemed to go perfectly well.

I have fully updated to the latest build and patches, and I have no problem booting into Windows using the option key at startup.

However, I want to be able to use this Boot Camp installation from inside VMWare Fusion, and as with the OP on this thread, I have the OSXRESERVED partition lying around after the install, and VMWare sees that partition and not the main Windows one.

I initially balked at LonerT's advice in a reply above to just delete the OSXRESERVED partition, since it seems to have a mixture of install media (meh) but also useful looking (vital?) EFI materials...

Mikes-2015-iMac: michthom$ ls /Volumes/OSXRESERVED/

$RECYCLE.BIN autorun.inf setup.exe

$WinPEDriver$ boot sources

AutoUnattend.xml bootmgr support

BootCamp bootmgr.efi

System Volume Information efi

When I screwed my courage to the sticking-place, I found Disk Utility was not exactly helping me to remove the partition. I may be going senile but I cannot select the OSXRESERVED partition and get the little minus button to become active to let me remove the dang thing anyway!

So I ran the commands LonerT posted before (see output below), and I'm asking for help:

• Did BCA mess up and switch my disk to some weird hybrid rather than a pure EFI scheme (which Windows 10 and El Capitan should both be happy with)?
• Is there a way out of this mess short of removing the whole sorry mess and making a USB installer to avoid the OSXRESERVED issue?
• Or am i overcomplicating things (typical me!) and there's an easy way out I just can't see?

Thanks for any and all help!

Mike Thomson

P.S. Would it be too hard for the site admins to publish a list of invalid characters - I have been editing this post for ages trying to get the content into an acceptable format!

Mikes-2015-iMac: michthom$ diskutil cs list

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)

!

+-- Logical Volume Group F1F54F85-A00C-4E27-A249-F73EB030A1C6

=========================================================

Name: Macintosh HD

Status: Online

Size: 2012855631872 B (2.0 TB)

Free Space: 483328 B (483.3 KB)

!

+-< Physical Volume 5A9D43A0-21D6-4030-B4A2-A10240EFA3BE

! ----------------------------------------------------

! Index: 0

! Disk: disk1s2

! Status: Online

! Size: 120988852224 B (121.0 GB)

!

+-< Physical Volume 1D8076C4-4160-402F-B9AF-B5ECFFCD0C1F

! ----------------------------------------------------

! Index: 1

! Disk: disk0s2

! Status: Online

! Size: 1891866779648 B (1.9 TB)

!

+-> Logical Volume Family 08401C9B-0DFC-4D45-8724-ACC6842163B1

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

Encryption Type: None

!

+-> Logical Volume C6AFE60F-0AF0-40F4-9B60-DD46B39146F3

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

Disk: disk2

Status: Online

Size (Total): 2006999891968 B (2.0 TB)

Revertible: No

LV Name: Macintosh HD

Volume Name: Macintosh HD

Content Hint: Apple_HFS

LVG Type: Fusion, Sparse

Mikes-2015-iMac: michthom$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

Password:

gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=2000398934016; sectorsize=512; blocks=3907029168

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 3907029167

start size index contents

0 1 PMBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

409640 3695052304 2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

3695461944 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

3696731480 680

3696732160 15624192 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

3712356352 2048

3712358400 193748992 5 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

3906107392 921600 6 GPT part - DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC

3907028992 143

3907029135 32 Sec GPT table

3907029167 1 Sec GPT header

Mikes-2015-iMac: michthom$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk1

gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=121332826112; sectorsize=512; blocks=236978176

gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0

gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 236978175

start size index contents

0 1 PMBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

409640 236306352 2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

236715992 262144 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

236978136 7

236978143 32 Sec GPT table

236978175 1 Sec GPT header

Argh - I should have been more brave, sorry.

Figuring I had nothing to lose I pointed VMWare (v8.1.0) at the 'wrong' Boot Camp disk (e.g. the OSXRESERVED partition) and it seems to have figured the issue out for itself. It imported the Boot Camp install as a new VM, installed VMWare Tools without complaint and I can still boot natively in Boot Camp.

The cosmetic issue of the 'spare' partition I can live with by not showing Hard Disks on the desktop (Finder Preferences) and having an alias to my 'main' Mac OS X volume.

Hope this helps someone else nonetheless?

Cheers

Mike

Can you post the output of diskutil list disk0 ?

Sure thing, here you go:

Mikes-2015-iMac:~ michthom$ diskutil list disk0
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD 1.9 TB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data OSXRESERVED 8.0 GB disk0s4
5: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 99.2 GB disk0s5
6: Windows Recovery 471.9 MB disk0s6

Please post the output of

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Also, can you check if your W10 is UEFI? You will have to run W10 under Bootcamp and run msinfo32.

The Windows msinfo32 will be delayed as I'm about to head out of the door, but here's the fdisk output:

Mikes-2015-iMac:~ michthom$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Password:

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 243201/255/63 [3907029168 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

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

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

1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 3907029167] <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

You seem to have an EFI installation for Windows. The OSXRESERVED is primarily a left-over that BC Assistant did not clean up properly. With Bootcamp/Windows in place, it is a bit of pain to remove this tiny 'sandwiched' partition. If you do want to remove it, you will need to backup OS X to Time Machine, BC/Windows via Winclone or Camptune, erase the internal 'Fusion' disk and restore OS X first, and then Windows.

Hi LonerT

Yes, it seems to be UEFI according to msinfo32:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro

Version 10.0.10586 Build 10586

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Name DESKTOP-NGH25TA

System Manufacturer Apple Inc.

System Model iMac17,1

System Type x64-based PC

System SKU Unsupported

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date Apple Inc. IM171.88Z.0105.B05.1511031741, 03/11/2015

SMBIOS Version 3.0

BIOS Mode UEFI

BaseBoard Manufacturer Apple Inc.

BaseBoard Model Not Available

BaseBoard Name Base Board

Platform Role Desktop

Secure Boot State Unsupported

PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible

Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS

System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1

Locale United Kingdom

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.10586.0"

User Name DESKTOP-NGH25TA\Michael Thomson

Time Zone
GMT Standard Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM)

24.0 GB

Total Physical Memory
23.9 GB

Available Physical Memory
22.2 GB

Total Virtual Memory
27.8 GB

Available Virtual Memory 25.9 GB

Page File Space 3.88 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes

Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translateon Extensions Yes

Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware Yes

Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

Well, given that my initial fears haven't been realised, and it's just a cosmetic issue (I'm not getting overly concerned about 8GB out of a 2TB Fusion drive) I think I will simply live with things as they now are. Thanks for all your responses, and sorry if I wasted your time, but hopefully it'll steer someone else away from similar trouble (or give reassurance) in future.

Cheers

Mike

No worries. You have an advantage with the OSXRESERVED intact. It is your Windows Installer. You may want to also make a copy on an external disk.

BTW, you did not waste my time 😉, so there is no need to apologize.