Accidentally installed Windows xp over Mac OS X

Pop in the OS X install disks that came with your mac and hold down the option key at startup. The CD should appear on your screen as a startup device and you can load it and run disk utility.

Disk utility will show you your disk partitions, at which point it should be fairly noticeable whether you overwrote your OS X partition. If you did, you'll just have to reformat your drive and reinstall OS X.

I don't understand why you can't access that drive. I purchased an external hard drive which was formatted to NTFS and it was a simple matter of running disk utility, erasing the drive, and reformatting to the Mac file system. I currently use that drive for backup.

When you boot your MBP from the Leopard Disk are you selecting disk utility from the top menu? Disk Utility should "see" the drive regardless of whether it's formatted to NTFS or anything else. NTFS is of course read only to a Mac but the drive can still be erased and reformatted. Post back exactly what you're doing. I suspect that you're somehow not using the right method to erase and reformat your drive.

Regards.

A linux CD should be able to delete the partition in a LiveCD (similar environment that Mac OS X loads up on in on your Mac OS X CD).

If you're up to it, I can hopefully help you out tomorrow.

Get a version of knoppix or something pop it in load up linux and use the formatting application included with it (I forgot what it's called) and format the drive to hfs.

pretty simple stuff.

http://www.knoppix.net/

if you need it haha.

Yes, I'll run you through this really quick (I wanted an excuse to check out the new version of knoppix anywayz, so I'll make sure this works XD)

anywayz first go and download the x86 version of knoppix (from here the file is called "KNOPPIX_V3.6-2004-08-16-EN.iso")


burn it to a cd, put it in the cd drive of the mac restart it, it should boot up into linux it does take a bit of time, could be up to ten minutes or so. (probably faster, but just in case it isn't haha.)


if you've gotten this far, go to the menu bar (should be at the bottom of the screen) click the lil * icon thingy on the bottom left look for a partition tool or something like that. open it up and then from there it's really simple. it'll give you step by step instructions.


As Far as what to format it to, fat 32 would work or fat 16 or if it has it just use hfs or hfs+

(when you go to reinstall os x it will format it again anyway so it wouldn't really matter)

You also have access to terminal on the install disk ...

so you can see if the unix commands let you do something disk utility doesn't.

Should find something similar to.

You can format in HFS/+ with the terminal, you can even format in FAT32, using the command:


sudo newfs_hfs -F 32 /dev/disk1s2

where /dev/disk1s2 is the UNIX name of your drive, which you can determine in various ways (df is one).

use newfs_msdos to format to FAT32

Be very careful with the device name, as you can format the wrong drive/partition because of juste one number...

Click to expand...

RupertNos said:

Yes thats what they told me to do. But when i look to erase, partion or first aid i cant click anything because its all grayed out or locked where i cant press it.So i cant erase because i think i reformated the whole harddrive to an old version of NTFS which locked my hardrive.Well when i went to the tech support at apple store they said that they couldnt access any of the files because it was read only and they needed another comp to re format it. But the windows xp i installed was from comp. camp like in 2004 and i dont think it was SP2 so that might be what messed it up. They said that the NTFS read only couldnt be accessed throught another mac as well so now im out of luck until i buy a new hardrive or dont kno what other option there is.

Click to expand...

It's very simple, in fact I had the same problem a few months ago!

All you have to do is:
- Boot from the MacOSX Install CD/DVD;
- Pick 'Disk utility', under the Utilities menu on the Menu Bar;
- Now, choose your hard drive and go to the 'partition' tab;
- Click on 'Options' and pick the right partion scheme for you.

Probably you have your hard drive set to MasterBoot Record and that's what is causing the problem.

Did it work?

For those that are still trying to solve this problem i have a solution (non of the other solutions mentioned worked for me)

Boot your computer using the XP cd and use it to create a new 30gb FAT partition. After it is created insert your OSX disk. You can now use disk utility and your new partition to partition your entire hard drive with the correct settings required to reinstall OSX.

Just boot from the XP disc, go through the steps... (don't repair, F8 to agree) once you're at the partition table, delete all partitions. Once that is done, reboot your machine, take out the XP disc and put the Leopard disk in and boot off of that. Hopefully then disk utility will work.

Solution

Just had to go through this myself here is a step by step that I did.

-put in the Windows cd and reboot computer with cd.
-let windows do its thing press F8 when asked.
-on the partition screen delete all the partitions.
(I am not 100% sure if creating a new "RAW" partition is necessary or not. I did but don't think you have to. It was just deleted during the next steps.)
-press F3 twice to exit setup.
-when the mac reboots hold 'option' eject the windows cd and insert Mac Cd 1
-boot from the mac disk
-go to utilities on the top of the screen.
-then 'disk Utilities'
-click on the disk volume and go to 'reformat'
-under partition amount go to "partition 1"
-from there click 'options' should be under the blank white square.
-click on 'GLUD' or 'GLID Disk' forgot what its called.
-name the disk and click reformat
-click ok to accept
-once finished should only take a minute exit the screen go back to where it asks 'where would You like to install Mac OS X?' click on the disk you reformatted should be the only one.
-go through the reinstall of mac and you are set.

I have apple care and went to apple store to get it fixed they gave me some bs about the hard drive being "unreadable" and they cannot fix it and will have to send me a refurbished mac if they still cant fix it after sending it in, yeah right.

Nice Mac community here very helpful. I hope this helps other people and saves them from their own stupidity like mine.

I woukd just put in your osx disk and put that back on your computer mac id better than windows I would know I made a switch to make and then was forced back because of school work.

Arissis said:

Just had to go through this myself here is a step by step that I did.

-put in the Windows cd and reboot computer with cd.
-let windows do its thing press F8 when asked.
-on the partition screen delete all the partitions.
(I am not 100% sure if creating a new "RAW" partition is necessary or not. I did but don't think you have to. It was just deleted during the next steps.)
-press F3 twice to exit setup.
-when the mac reboots hold 'option' eject the windows cd and insert Mac Cd 1
-boot from the mac disk
-go to utilities on the top of the screen.
-then 'disk Utilities'
-click on the disk volume and go to 'reformat'
-under partition amount go to "partition 1"
-from there click 'options' should be under the blank white square.
-click on 'GLUD' or 'GLID Disk' forgot what its called.
-name the disk and click reformat
-click ok to accept
-once finished should only take a minute exit the screen go back to where it asks 'where would You like to install Mac OS X?' click on the disk you reformatted should be the only one.
-go through the reinstall of mac and you are set.

I have apple care and went to apple store to get it fixed they gave me some bs about the hard drive being "unreadable" and they cannot fix it and will have to send me a refurbished mac if they still cant fix it after sending it in, yeah right.

Nice Mac community here very helpful. I hope this helps other people and saves them from their own stupidity like mine.

Click to expand...

While that may work, it's a bad idea since Windows uses a different partition map format or something. After my friend installed Linux on his Mac, Disk Utility has been unable to repartition it, because Linux uses a different partition map format or something.

EDIT: Ooops. Re-read it, and I think that might actually work. Missed out the bit about changing the partition type.

I can't believe I did this...

You can also go into Terminal if you've already booted up the OS X install disc and use fdisk reset your partition table. I'm not sure exactly what worked for me. I think I ended up resetting the disk to 8mb boot and hfs. On my MacBook, I could start an interactive fdisk session like this:

fdisk -e /dev/disk0

"help" then shows you your options. I'm too frustrated to remember any other specifics... Who would want to run Windows on a Mac in the first place??

hey guys
dont worry bro, i dont know why i tried installing windows either
im registering JUST to post this
cos i know a billion people are going to screw their mac and google it ending up here
youve installed windows on the wrong partition? or realised half way through your install that its only service pack 1 and you can't get out of it, and since its service pack 1 you can't quit the installation.

either way.

"omg omg omg white screen of death wheres all my files *tear*"

booting from osx is now impossible. and if you formatted the wrong drive to ntfs all your data is lost unless you used time machine.

you should be able to chuck in your leopard install disk and boot up from that. if it defaultly boots to the homosexual dos screen and ends up saying no boot disk or device, chuck in your leopard disk, and hold the option key from the moment you turned it on. it should show your leopard disk. click the lil arrow to boot from it. now proceed to take your windows whatever disk and snap it.

if you end up not being able to write to the drive, even in Disk Utility you cant edit it, and after going into 'info' it says "Writeable: No". bugger. Its now 'locked' and you ring apple and they say its a windows file system and its 'locked' and they cant help cos its 'locked'.. it its all lies. they just dont know what they're talking about.

once you get your installer going, choose the utilities menu, and go to terminal. heres where the crazy computer geek stuff happens. i just switched over to mac a few days ago and dont know jaaaaack about unix or its programming. so im proud that i figured this out haha.

your main hard disk (disk0 usually) is now ntfs. so you have to reformat it for your leopard disk to be able to write to it again. type this.

diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ "Macintosh HD" disk0

through my very limited knowledge of unix i think it just opened the disk utility function, erased the current disk and wrote a new file system of HFS+. It named it Macintosh HD and it did all this to the disk, disk0.

I know this all works cos i did it all about 8 minutes ago. Leopard is currently reinstalling .

Hope this helps anyone!

caskin8a is a genius, simple method to all this madness. follow his steps and dont ever attempt to run windows on your mmac its not worth it.

Well guys what can I say, today this scenario happened to me, and to be honest I can not describe to you how much I have lost.

I run a video gaming website, and I have macbook for around 3 months now, and just had taken the full step to swapping over, with all my shows on there, and more importantly stuff from my xmas show I was due to record today.

However I just decided to put windows in using boot-camp so I could format my external drive I was selling, worse thing is, I didn't really need to, I could have access to a win pc , but having tried this already in the first few weeks, and I may add with all the same stuff and disks...all no problems at all, even ran it for a few weeks.

However, imagine my absolute horror, when I noticed a continuous loop of my win xp install, so I needed to take steps, but guess what....I found this as described here...absolutely every gone to crap, not a thing on my macbook.
All this 10 mins from recording my xmas show.


Anyway guys I would just like to know WHY this happens, and also to thank the above poster, without whom I wouldnt even have gotten anything back on, as I didnt realise how bad it was, until a friend pointed this thread out, and I to realised I couldn't even install a new OX.....

well just to say following this, I now have a clean install on my macbook, but sadly I have learnt it is possible for the mac to suffer dire consequences.
as ever people...back-up...pc or mac, makes no difference.