Bootcamp (Windows Vista 32) "no bootable device" after partition on El Capitan/Snow Leopard

Question

Bootcamp (Windows Vista 32) "no bootable device" after partition on El Capitan/Snow Leopard

I'm on a MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010). I was running BootCamp with Vista 32, and Snow Leopard, plus a scratch drive partition for Snow Leopard. That all worked just fine for years (thanks to some sudo commands.)

Then I added an additional partition for El Capitan (which I was forced into having to do so I could sync and restore my new iPhone (which wouldn't communicate with the last iTunes update that would work on Snow Leopard (even though I created the backup with that pairing, ***), and I still need Snow Leopard for some aps that won't work on El Capitan.))

As you can guess, the partitioning and/or upgrade made BootCamp stop booting. I tried the sudo fix here to no avail and BootCamp still won't boot. After reading about the 4 partition limit of MBR, next I then re-merged my scratch drive and Snow Leopard partitions, in hopes that would keep me at 4 partitions. I then re-tried the sudo command linked above once again but it still won't boot to Windows.

BootCamp is totally browseable in Finder, and it is an option under System Preferences/Start Up Disk, however when you try to make it start up in Windows I get this error: "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key."

(I don't have a Vista install or bootdisk, only an upgrade disc, and my XP install disc auto-ejects when inserted during the "no bootable disc" prompt.)

Also, BootCamp doesn't show up if you manually hold 'option' at start up, it's only an option thur System Preferences/Start Up Disk.

I'm aware that my issue could possibly be that I have more than 4 partitions, but I don't know how to check if I have any hidden ones. When I upgraded to El Capitan I'm pretty sure I got the error message that due to my unconventional partition scheme with Boot Camp AND the extra scratch drive, that this was going to prohibit El Capitan from creating a Recovery HD or being able to use FileVault. So I may or may not only have 4 partitions- All I know is I can only see 4:

diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 120.2 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_HFS Snow Leopard 314.4 GB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 64.9 GB disk0s4

To further complicate matters, since I initially performed the above linked sudo commands, now when I reattempt them I get this error message whether or not the BootCamp partition is mounted:

sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0s4

Password:

fdisk: /dev/disk0s4: Resource busy

BootCamp partition unmounts in Disc Utility just fine, but if you try to eject it in Finder you have to Force Eject it.

PLEASE HELP! (Loner T, Christopher Murphy, MurphyChris)

THANKS!

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4), Vista 32, BootCamp, Snow Leopard

Posted on May 2, 2016 11:30 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 3, 2016 6:07 AM in response to BootCampClick

Snow Leopard is the last version which does not use Recovery HD. Later OS X versions add Recovery HD as a user-invisible partition. If you add another partition or more, the MBR used to support Windows is broken. I also notice you do not have a Recovery HD, was it manually removed?

In your specific case, my recommendation would be to install El Capitan on an external disk and avoid such complications.

Can you post the output of

sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk0s4 count=1 2>/dev/null |hexdump -C

Reply

Answer 2

May 3, 2016 5:42 PM in response to Loner T

I'm positive that when I installed El Capitan it explicitly told me it would mostly likely skip the HD Recovery steps due to the fact that I already had an extra partition in addition to BootCamp. I didnt manually remove it, but I did manually set up Time Machine on an external drive so I could still back up the El Capitan partition and everything is working fine except BootCamp. I'd rather not run El Capitan from an external drive because I use it for PS with the Snow Leopard drive, which I turned Journaling off on, running as the scratch disc for the PS on El Capitan. External drives for either will bottleneck my PS performance at the speed of my USB 2 port.

Loner T, if I had a fifth hidden HD Recovery partition would it be showing up in the diskutil list?

Mind you, I did have 5 partitions when I installed El Capitan, so I'm sure that broke the MBR. But I have since merged two of them into the Snow Leopard drive and I'm pretty sure I only have 4 total partitions now. I'n hoping it's just a matter of fixing the MBR so BootCamp will boot.

I'll post the sudo result when I get back to my computer tomorrow. Thanks so much for responding!

Reply

Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 3, 2016 5:57 PM in response to BootCampClick

BootCampClick wrote:

I'm positive that when I installed El Capitan it explicitly told me it would mostly likely skip the HD Recovery steps due to the fact that I already had an extra partition in addition to BootCamp. I didnt manually remove it, but I did manually set up Time Machine on an external drive so I could still back up the El Capitan partition and everything is working fine except BootCamp. I'd rather not run El Capitan from an external drive because I use it for PS with the Snow Leopard drive, which I turned Journaling off on, running as the scratch disc for the PS on El Capitan. External drives for either will bottleneck my PS performance at the speed of my USB 2 port.

You can go the other way. Put SL on external disk and El Capitan on the internal disk with Bootcamp. Turning off journaling can lead to corruption on your SL/scratch drive. The backups on TM may not help with it turned off.

if I had a fifth hidden HD Recovery partition would it be showing up in the diskutil list?

Diskutil list will show all partitions, while DU UI will not.

Mind you, I did have 5 partitions when I installed El Capitan, so I'm sure that broke the MBR. But I have since merged two of them into the Snow Leopard drive and I'm pretty sure I only have 4 total partitions now. I'n hoping it's just a matter of fixing the MBR so BootCamp will boot.

Which two specific partitions were merged? Before ELC, you would have had EFI/SL/Bootcamp, and after ELC, you would have had EFI/SL/ELC/Recovery/Bootcamp.

Reply

Answer 4

May 3, 2016 9:16 PM in response to Loner T

Before ELC, for years I successfully had EFI/SL/scratch/BootCamp, everything worked fine.

Then i split SL into two and put a second SL on the new partition and upgraded that one to ELC and left the other SL as SL, making it:

EFI/ELC/SL/scratch/BootCamp

ran the sudo linked in my original post, to no avail.

Then I merged scratch & SL, turned off journaling on that combined partition, and that's what you see now in the diskutil list:

EFI/ELC/SL/BootCamp

ran the same sudo again, to no avail.

----

It's complicated, but I don't want either ELC or SL on an external drive. ELC runs PS and that'll lag on an external, the SL runs audio programs that will have latency on an external.

If an un-journaled SL is an issue, can you advice me of the implications of using either a journaled scratch disc, or the possibility of using the BootCamp drive as scratch.

thanks

Reply

Answer 5

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 4, 2016 6:03 AM in response to BootCampClick

BootCampClick wrote:

Before ELC, for years I successfully had EFI/SL/scratch/BootCamp, everything worked fine.

Then i split SL into two and put a second SL on the new partition and upgraded that one to ELC and left the other SL as SL, making it:

EFI/ELC/SL/scratch/BootCamp

ran the sudo linked in my original post, to no avail.

Then I merged scratch & SL, turned off journaling on that combined partition, and that's what you see now in the diskutil list:

EFI/ELC/SL/BootCamp

Windows on Macs prior to 2015 uses a mapping technique called Hybrid MBR. It is a one-to-one mapping of the disk partitions to an equivalent MBR, in order to support legacy OSes like Windows 3.1/XP/Vista/7. W7 has an alternate method (EFI), which is supported by W8+ and W10. The MBR has a limit of four (4) entries. Your initial layout fits nicely in the 4-partition mapping. New SL creates five entries. ELC Upgrade (depending on Recovery HD) will make it 6 or 7. This breaks the MBR. The sudo command you used fixes the partition type of the 4th entry with the assumption that it is the Bootcamp/Windows partition. It is not a panacea for all issues, as you add new partitions, because Bootcamp's ordinal position moves.

It's complicated, but I don't want either ELC or SL on an external drive. ELC runs PS and that'll lag on an external, the SL runs audio programs that will have latency on an external.

If an un-journaled SL is an issue, can you advice me of the implications of using either a journaled scratch disc, or the possibility of using the BootCamp drive as scratch.

The 'un'-journaled SL is not what you want because it complicates recovery. Would you consider running Windows as a Virtual Machine? If you do graphics-intensive work in Windows, a VM is bad choice. It is also a bad choice if you have memory intensive work.

Reply

Answer 6

May 4, 2016 2:06 PM in response to Loner T

sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk0s4 count=1 2>/dev/null |hexdump -C

Password:

00000000 eb 52 90 4e 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00 |.R.NTFS .....|

00000010 00 00 00 00 00 f8 00 00 3f 00 ff 00 70 db a6 32 |........?...p..2|

00000020 00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 97 84 8d 07 00 00 00 00 |................|

00000030 00 00 0c 00 00 00 00 00 49 d8 78 00 00 00 00 00 |........I.x.....|

00000040 f6 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 c1 67 48 d2 95 48 d2 ea |.........gH..H..|

00000050 00 00 00 00 fa 33 c0 8e d0 bc 00 7c fb 68 c0 07 |.....3.....|.h..|

00000060 1f 1e 68 66 00 cb 88 16 0e 00 66 81 3e 03 00 4e |..hf......f.>..N|

00000070 54 46 53 75 15 b4 41 bb aa 55 cd 13 72 0c 81 fb |TFSu..A..U..r...|

00000080 55 aa 75 06 f7 c1 01 00 75 03 e9 d2 00 1e 83 ec |U.u.....u.......|

00000090 18 68 1a 00 b4 48 8a 16 0e 00 8b f4 16 1f cd 13 |.h...H..........|

000000a0 9f 83 c4 18 9e 58 1f 72 e1 3b 06 0b 00 75 db a3 |.....X.r.;...u..|

000000b0 0f 00 c1 2e 0f 00 04 1e 5a 33 db b9 00 20 2b c8 |........Z3... +.|

000000c0 66 ff 06 11 00 03 16 0f 00 8e c2 ff 06 16 00 e8 |f...............|

000000d0 40 00 2b c8 77 ef b8 00 bb cd 1a 66 23 c0 75 2d |@.+.w......f#.u-|

000000e0 66 81 fb 54 43 50 41 75 24 81 f9 02 01 72 1e 16 |f..TCPAu$....r..|

000000f0 68 07 bb 16 68 70 0e 16 68 09 00 66 53 66 53 66 |h...hp..h..fSfSf|

00000100 55 16 16 16 68 b8 01 66 61 0e 07 cd 1a e9 6a 01 |U...h..fa.....j.|

00000110 90 90 66 60 1e 06 66 a1 11 00 66 03 06 1c 00 1e |..f`..f...f.....|

00000120 66 68 00 00 00 00 66 50 06 53 68 01 00 68 10 00 |fh....fP.Sh..h..|

00000130 b4 42 8a 16 0e 00 16 1f 8b f4 cd 13 66 59 5b 5a |.B..........fY[Z|

00000140 66 59 66 59 1f 0f 82 16 00 66 ff 06 11 00 03 16 |fYfY.....f......|

00000150 0f 00 8e c2 ff 0e 16 00 75 bc 07 1f 66 61 c3 a0 |........u...fa..|

00000160 f8 01 e8 08 00 a0 fb 01 e8 02 00 eb fe b4 01 8b |................|

00000170 f0 ac 3c 00 74 09 b4 0e bb 07 00 cd 10 eb f2 c3 |..<.t...........|

00000180 0d 0a 41 20 64 69 73 6b 20 72 65 61 64 20 65 72 |..A disk read er|

00000190 72 6f 72 20 6f 63 63 75 72 72 65 64 00 0d 0a 42 |ror occurred...B|

000001a0 4f 4f 54 4d 47 52 20 69 73 20 6d 69 73 73 69 6e |OOTMGR is missin|

000001b0 67 00 0d 0a 42 4f 4f 54 4d 47 52 20 69 73 00 63 |g...BOOTMGR is.c|

000001c0 6f 6d 70 72 65 73 73 65 64 00 0d 0a 50 72 00 73 |ompressed...Pr.s|

000001d0 73 20 43 74 72 6c 2b 41 6c 74 2b 44 65 6c 00 74 |s Ctrl+Alt+Del.t|

000001e0 6f 20 72 65 73 74 61 72 74 0d 0a 00 00 00 80 00 |o restart.......|

000001f0 00 00 07 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa |..............U.|

00000200

Reply

Answer 7

May 4, 2016 3:01 PM in response to Loner T

Yeah I do very memory intensive work in Windows, so virtual is totally out unfortunately. Also, I just learned BootCamp won't work as a scratch disk because NTFS is an unusable format, so that's out too leaving me with the scratch disk problem.

Being that I'm at 4 partitions now, I'm hoping to just get BootCamp working and take my chances with SL. I think my best option might be to keep SL unjournaled for now and just manually back up data, get a FireWire 800 RAID for the ELC scratch disk, and then eventually turn journaling back on for the SL.

Let me ask you this though, is the MBR needed for Windows to run or only for it to boot in cooperation with OSx/BootCamp? What I mean is this, could I get Windows to boot from a boot DVD/external even with a broken MBR? (If so, this is what I"m thinking: once I fix BootCamp and can therefore get back into Windows, I could use Windows to create a proper boot disk on DVD or External--- Would I be able to then re-add 5th partition (so I don't have to buy a RAID), break the MBR, and just give up on being able to start up thru OSx/BootCamp/StartUpDisk and rely on getting into Windows via hold 'option' and starting from the DVD/external? Mind you, I don't want to actually run Windows from a DVD/external because of memory issues, but if a DVD/external can make up for a broken MBR, I'd consider that a successful work around.

THANKS!

Reply

Answer 8

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 4, 2016 6:27 PM in response to BootCampClick

There are two possible paths from which you can choose.

1. MBR Stuffing - This allows mapping more than 1 contiguous chunk of GPT partitions into a single MBR entry. Please see [Help] Can't boot to windows (8.1) after resizing partition as an example.

2. Replacing the Optical drive with a Optibay caddy and an additional disk for scratch and/or OS X. Windows will not work reliably on your specific model in the Optibay. This requires that you keep the Optical drive, and do hardware work, if you need to re-install/repair Windows.

Reply

Answer 9

May 5, 2016 3:57 PM in response to BootCampClick

I only need SL for two legacy aps that I don't use offer and could easily back up manually. I don't need it journaled. Can you please help me repair the MBR without stuffing. I'm at 4 partitions, it should work right?

Reply

Answer 10

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 5, 2016 4:01 PM in response to BootCampClick

Can you post the output of the following Terminal commands

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Reply

Answer 11

May 5, 2016 4:18 PM in response to Loner T

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

Password:

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 234794024 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

235203664 262144

235465808 614068000 3 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

849533808 262144

849795952 126715032 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

976510984 262151

976773135 32 Sec GPT table

976773167 1 Sec GPT header

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

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: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 409640 - 234794024] HFS+

3: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 235465808 - 614068000] HFS+

4: 0C 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 849795952 - 126715032] Win95 FAT32L

THANKS

Reply

Answer 12

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 5, 2016 4:55 PM in response to BootCampClick

Can you boot into SL and the run the following steps? (El Capitan has SIP which you cannot disable because you are missing Recovery HD). Please ignore i386 MBR error, but not any others.

sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0

p

setpid 4

07

flag 4

p

w

y

Reboot and test.

Reply

Answer 13

May 5, 2016 5:25 PM in response to Loner T

YES! Love you Loner T! Thanks so much, works perfectly.

I had tried (sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0... etc etc) before but from ELC, and it wouldn't do the trick. All I had to do was try it from SL, because of the SIP issue you describe above.

Reply

Answer 14

May 5, 2016 5:26 PM in response to BootCampClick

Last thing: Loner T, can you please explain to me what the ELC Recovery HD that I lack does exactly? Besides FileVault, am I missing out on anything that a manual Time Machine external backup doesn't take care of?

(I have ELC journaled, SL unjournaled, each with their own unique external TM back up)

Thanks again!

Reply

Answer 15

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

May 5, 2016 6:09 PM in response to BootCampClick

If your OS X gets corrupted, Recovery HD allows to you rebuild your Mac, if necessary. You can also use an external disk using How to install OS X on an external drive connected to your Mac - Apple Support as a substitute, but that implies you have an external disk to accomplish this. The disk can be any 16GB or larger disk which can be erased and formatted.

Reply