vmWare Fusion nor System Preferences doesn't find windows startup disk in El Capitan iMac 27 late 2015

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Level 1

4 points

vmWare Fusion nor System Preferences doesn't find windows startup disk in El Capitan iMac 27 late 2015

My mac is iMac 27" retina (late 2015) with OS X 10.11.5, 32 GB RAM, 120 GB SSD and 2 TB hard disk.

CoreStorage is reverted (disabled, no Fusion). SIP rootless (csrutil disabled). Diskutil list see below:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk0

1: Microsoft Reserved 134.2 MB disk0s1

2: Microsoft Basic Data WIN8 322.0 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_HFS DuunitP 1.7 TB disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS MacintoshOSX 120.5 GB disk1s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk1s3

I can't figure anymore what to try. I can't install windows 8.1 with Bootcamp Assistant. Won't work with those disk combination or with this mac. Partition and formatting to HFS+ and FAT32 doesn't help either. Windows setup says can't install because disk is not GPT. Only possible way to install windows is to delete all partitions on disk0 and make new ones for NTFS and HFS. Then windows setup is able to format and install.

After successful installation windows bootable with restart option-button pressed and works ok. Even OS X system preferences sees Windows partition but can't change startup disk to windows. Says "bless-command can't set startup disk". vmWare Fusion 8.11 can't find bootcamp startup disk either.

GDISK -p list:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1

Partition table scan:

MBR: protective

BSD: not present

APM: not present

GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): Disk /dev/disk0: 3907029168 sectors, 1.8 TiB

Logical sector size: 512 bytes

Disk identifier (GUID): 68EE12E9-3113-4AAD-8008-61E6B4252FAE

Partition table holds up to 128 entries

First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 3907029134

Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries

Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB)

Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name

1 2048 264191 128.0 MiB 0C01 Microsoft reserved ...

2 264192 629147647 299.9 GiB 0700 Basic data partition

3 629147648 3907029134 1.5 TiB AF00 Apple HFS/HFS+

Command (? for help):

No problems found. 2014 free sectors (1007.0 KiB) available in 1

segments, the largest of which is 2014 (1007.0 KiB) in size.

Command (? for help):

GPT -r -vv show /dev/disk0 list:

start size index contents

0 1 PMBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 2014

2048 262144 1 GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE

264192 628883456 2 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

629147648 3277881487 3 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

3907029135 32 Sec GPT table

3907029167 1 Sec GPT header

I've tried all gpt and gdisk guides with no luck. As you can see. Don't know what to try. Where or what is the problem in my mac.

Anybody, any help or tip?

Posted on Jul 14, 2016 5:08 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

Jul 14, 2016 5:14 AM in response to itpeetu

Just use the standard method, format to MSDOS and convert to NTFS using the Windows installer (page 6 of the BootCamp instructions)

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Answer 2

itpeetu Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 18, 2016 12:52 AM in response to Csound1

Sorry, tried that and exFAT. Windows8.1 installer didn't accept hybrid or protective MBR disk. Only GPT map was allowed.

I gave up with bootcam assistant and partition, used only vmWare Fusion virtual machine which works ok.

Thank you for your help.

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Answer 3

Jul 18, 2016 6:19 AM in response to itpeetu

It seems you have two drives, these being the formerly components of the Fusion drive. As you say you seem to have removed the Fusion setup. I would have separately formatted the 2TB drive if you have not already done so.

I think however the more likely issue is that you are trying to use the hard disk for Boot Camp and this does not appear to have a copy of OS X installed on it. This also means it does not have an EFI partition on it which is probably the critical issue. It is on some models of Mac supposed to be possible to dedicate a drive for use with Windows via Boot Camp but for simplicity you might want to install a basic copy of OS X which will also ensure you have an EFI partition as well. You can wipe the Mac boot partition afterwards if you wish.

Note: VMware is able to use a Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine image although this then loses the benefits of snapshots etc.

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Answer 4

itpeetu Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 31, 2016 11:37 PM in response to John Lockwood

There was an EFI partition, but Bootcamp assistant wouldn't continue to install windows after creating Bootcamp partition on that disk.

Thought that OS X partition on 2 TB disk would help, but didn't try that. I stubbornly tried to use separate windows partition because in my iMac 27" (late 2013, similar hardware as in a new one; 120GB SSD and 1 TB harddisk) I could do that without OS X in 1 TB disk.

I think that Windows 8.1 is a reason for all this. Though not for sure, because windows 7 wouldn't accept this new imac hardware to install itself.

Using windows 8.1 and now upgraded Windows 10 works ok as a vmWare virtualmachine.

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Answer 5

Aug 1, 2016 3:54 AM in response to itpeetu

If you are using VMWare Fusion, there is no need what so ever

to create a Bootcamp partition. Simply just format all OS X

extended journaled and within VMWare Fusion simply create a

virtual machine and select the desired hard drive size. It will then

create a "container" that holds a virtual hdd (basically just a Mac file)

and the virtual machine configuration data.

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