Can't install Windows anymore. EFI problem?

I'm having problems booting into my windows partition on my MacBook. Everything was fine until I had a recent power failure while using Windows 7 for office work. My Macbook just turned off with no warning. Upon turning on the macbook I get the "No Bootable Device" black screen.

I figured the Windows partition corrupted itself after the power failure. I proceed to delete the windows partition via Boot Camp Assistant in OSX, divide the hard drive again, and go ahead with reinstalling Windows 7. But here's the problem I can't seem to figure out. When formatting the BOOTCAMP partition in the Windows Installer to NTFS, I run into this error:







Probably the entire hard disk corrupted after the power failure? Okay, so I freshly reinstall Snow Leopard deleting all the contents on the HD. I even performed a complete format using the Zero Out method in Disk Utility. When the OSX install completed, I divided the partition again with Boot Camp Assistant and ran the windows installer only to run into the same error like pictured above. Tried this method again but also resetted NVRAM/PRAM and SMC. Still no luck.

So at this point, I'm thinking some part of the HD isn't working. I remove the HD from the macbook and replace it with the original 80GB hard drive that came with it. This time, instead of installing OSX, I formatted the hard drive in FAT32 with Disk Utility, and proceeded to install Windows 7 without OSX. I STILL get the same error though. Can't ever get passed it. Arghh. I guess its not an HD problem so I replace my 250gb HD back in.

Did some research on google and decided to run rEFIT for its custom boot screen. For the heck of it, I decided to run the Windows Partition that was listed on boot screen. Here is where I run into this error:



It says: "The firmware refused to boot from the selected volume."

Could this be an EFI problem? Is something corrupted boot rom that is restricting me from booting into the windows partition? I already performed a reset for the NVRAM/PRAM and SMC.

Also tried to reflash the EFI again but OSX won't let me. It says: "This computer does not need this update"

Anybody have any suggestions? I'm way out of warranty and have no Apple Care. My macbook is painted so Apple Store help is out of the question.

bump?

balamw said:

rEFIt comes with a utility called showpart. Can you post its output for the drive that supposedly still has Windows on it? I wonder if the Windows partition just isn't marked active or something stupid like that.

Personally, at your second screen shot I would usually use the "Delete" button to remove Disk(0)Partition(3) and create a new NTFS partition to install to there.

Also weird is that you have two ~150GB partitions on a 250 GB drive. This seems out of whack by the difference between GB and GiB.

B

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I don't have windows installed on the hard drive anymore. I formatted the disk like 5 times already.

Sorry about the typo. I meant 320gb hard drive.

Simmity said:

You need to format the partition as ntfs, so click on the partition and click format. After that you wil be able to install windows.

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Can't. An error appears (picture #2 above) when I press format on the target partition.

yourdailyapple said:

Why not remove every partition first, then just boot from the W7 install DVD and partition and format it during the install.

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Tried this. I am still getting the same error.

balamw said:

It says see the setup log files. Can you dig into that and post the contents?

B

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Can't seem to find the setup log anywhere.