Bootcamp didn't finish -- how can i continue install of windows on new partition?

I had a look at your disk drive list and I think your have filevault on. There are several items on the internet and on the Apple forum that suggest you must create your Boot Camp partition before you turn on Filevault on. This may explain why your BootCamp partition has a problem. The other thing I noticed is if I list the disc partitions on my MacBook in the same way you did in an earlier post the Windows partition description includes the name Boot Camp whereas yours doesn't.

BTW The advice Loner T gave regarding backing up using Time Machine and reformatting the disc and reloading everything from time machine is good. I have reloaded everything from time machine and it works well. When you use internet recovery it takes some time to download the recovery software. The Time Machine drive also has the same Recovery software and some people say it works as well as internet recovery in this situation. if you start the computer while holding "alt" down and then select the time machine disc it should load the Recovery system.

paulbrowning wrote:

I Plan to try that again from recovery mode disk utility before nuking the hard drive.

Deleting everything is my last resort.

If you use TM for a backup, your internal disk data is on the TM Backup. You are 'moving' data to TM, and then moving it back to you internal disk.

This can also be done using Terminal diskutil commands, and is usually faster, but many are uncomfortable with Terminal, and find the Unix-like work daunting, to say the least.

IanD1953 wrote:

I had a look at your disk drive list and I think your have filevault on. There are several items on the internet and on the Apple forum that suggest you must create your Boot Camp partition before you turn on Filevault on. This may explain why your BootCamp partition has a problem. The other thing I noticed is if I list the disc partitions on my MacBook in the same way you did in an earlier post the Windows partition description includes the name Boot Camp whereas yours doesn't.

FV2 is not the issue. The CS volume is resized (look at diskutil cs resizeStack) using distinct commands with callbacks. BCA fails to complete the process and leaves the disk structures incomplete. Please see Lost storage space on my mac as an example. It can also fail to create an MBR, which may be required on some Mac models. The BCA design accounts for FV2, but the implementation is pretty poor.

TM has two different restore methods - Migration from a TM or a Restore from TM. Please see Step 4 link.

Restore everything:

• To restore everything in your Time Machine backup, use OS X Recovery.
• To copy the files, settings, and OS X user accounts in your backup to another Mac, use Migration Assistant.

Please also see OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support .

Thanks Loner T for your comment on filevault 2. You may be able answer a question on something else that puzzled me regarding your advice for reloading anything from TM. Why doesn't using OS X Recovery on the main boot disc work properly when you reload everything from TM? I actually tried this and what I found was that everything worked even the name of the recover partition updated. The only thing I found was that I couldn't access the OS X Recovery partition with Command-R at startup. My understanding is that the problem relates to trying to write to the same partition OS X Recovery is running from but what I don't understand is why OSX Recovery isn't loaded into memory and running independently to the disk.

Your are using Local recovery (Command+R) and Internet Recovery (Command+Opt+R) interchangeably.

If you boot in Command+R, TM does not need to restore Local recovery, since you are already in it, it is mounted and running.

If you use Internet Recovery, you are running recovery from Apple servers, in which case TM will actually update Local Recovery as well.

Sorry I didn't explain properly. My interest was only in local recovery (Command-R).

How this came about was when I installed a new SSD I initially did a complete clean OSX install using internet recovery which installed the original OS X 10.8. I then reinstalled my my applications from TM. I had intended to leave OS X 10.8 installed but I found somethings didn't work with it so I rebooted with with Command-R and re-installed everything which included the newer OS X 10.9.5 from TM. All seemed fine and I noticed the name of the Recover partition had updated from Recovery 10.8 to Recovery 10.9. I could load the Recovery 10.9 if I rebooted while holding down Alt and selecting Recovery 10.9. However, I found that if I used Command-R at reboot after a long wait Internet recovery loaded instead of local recovery.

The odd thing is that TM appears to have written to the recovery partition.

I have since re-installed OSX 10.9.5 from App Store Purchases.

Ah. After the rename from 10.8 to 10.9 Recovery, if Command+R does not work, run a SMC and NVRAM Reset and test. Since you have already cleaned it up. test this in the future, if you have an opportunity.

Thanks I tried both those but it didn't fix it. I also compared the NVRAM setting before and after the re-install from App Store and they were identical except for a change I had made to the location settings.

To be honest the MacBook was working fine before I reinstall Mavericks for the second time. This relatively minor fault was just bugging me. I suppose I am just an old electronics engineer who is more interested in how things work than actually using them.

All seemed fine and I noticed the name of the Recover partition had updated from Recovery 10.8 to Recovery 10.9. I could load the Recovery 10.9 if I rebooted while holding down Alt and selecting Recovery 10.9. However, I found that if I used Command-R at reboot after a long wait Internet recovery loaded instead of local recovery.

The rename occurs at the volume level. It does not really reflect the change in content. The Recovery which renamed the volume from 10.8 to 10.9 failed to match the content because it was locked since you had it running. This left the Recovery content at 10.8 with the volume name as 10.9. You can rename running OS X volumes dynamically.

When you reboot and hold Alt/Option, the full hardware path is used to execute the code in partition pointed to, irrespective of it's name. There is no further validation (compared to the Command+R as noted below). Do you recall the OS X icon present under Re-Install OS X option before you cleaned up? It should have been the 10.8 icon.

Command+R does not use the hardware path alone, it has additional logic to check if the Recovery version and installed OS X version (in your case they mismatch 10.8 vs 10.9). Once this is discovered, an Internet Recovery is initiated. If you rebuilt Mavericks using IR, the Recovery HD would be unlocked and its contents updated correctly.

I have seen users run a dd command to move the Recovery HD to an external disk. The problem is two-fold because of such action. There is no local recovery, and OS X version upgrades will not be reflected on the external recovery partition.

This is worse with El Capitan due SIP. El Capitan blindly manipulates the Recovery HD to avoid such issues, which causes heartburn for Bootcamp users. For example a user removes Yosemite Recovery HD to install Ubuntu and W7 to work around the MBR partition limit and then upgrades to El Capitan. Once Recovery is rebuilt, now there are 5 GPT entries to be manipulated into 4 MBR entries.

I wish OS X had an 'expert' and a 'non-expert' mode, so users can choose how they want their Macs to behave. At the same time, I prefer not to have Windows, Windows Pro, Windows Ultimate, Windows Home,.... and such variants.

Great thank you. That makes a lot sense.

I appreciate you taking the time to explain this.

Sorry, I think your comment on Windows deserves a reply. There is something even worse and its call Windows Server and server policy. I had access to three dedicated Windows Servers and I was always tripping over the policy settings. I gave up on servers when I tried the same software on the Boot Camp partition of my MacBook i7. The MacBook was so much faster. I don’t think the Windows servers were that bad. I think it was probably the policy settings.

Now my next challenge is to get my wife to move from Windows XP to a Mac. She already has an iPad so we are getting there.

Windows server is the backbone of many a corporations Exchange and AD backends. The Policy Management and other aspects of this beast require a light and gentle touch to be tamed. A whip and stick just cause more issues. Bootcamp does not support Windows Servers or Enterprise editions. You can run them but there are too many issues. Even a standard PC running 2008 R2 is a pain.

Mobile devices (phones, tablets, phablets) are easier to transition than laptops/netbooks. Depending on the needs Microsoft Office (sans Visio and Project) are available on the Mac. I personally prefer the roots of XP being closer to VMS/Windows NT than the current incarnations. On days of nostalgia, I will run XP SP3 on a Dell Precision 650.

Please post back if you run into any other issues in this dark corner of the software world, where two protagonists (Windows and OS X) can sip a beer together, sitting at the same table and a Mac.