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Boot Camp broken in Leopard? "Disk Error"

E

enklined

macrumors 6502
Original poster
On my new MBP, I had Tiger and Boot Camp 1.4 Beta.

When I got my Leopard UTD disc, I simply did an upgrade. Last night, I was fed up with some of the weirdness, and decided to start with a clean slate.

I removed my windows/boot camp partition, popped in my Leopard disc, selected erase and Install, and within 30 minutes it was done (seems way too fast...wtf?)

Anyway, I go through the Boot Camp steps to install Windows. When I get to the Windows setup where you select a drive to install, it doesn't give me the option to format the Boot Camp C: drive, but instead just installs.

After rebooting, it gives me a DISK ERROR.

A bit of googling shows others have had this problem, too. Is EVERYONE having this problem? Did Apple break Boot Camp with Leopard?

Is there any viable workout other than formatting to Tiger, installing 1.4, then upgrading again?

Is it possible to uninstall the Boot Camp assistant on Leopard and find/download/install Boot Camp 1.4 on Leopard, and go from there?

I need windows for school - and this is driving me nuts!

Any guidance would be very much appreciated!
 
No one who did a fresh erase and install has run into this problem?

Does anyone have any solutions?
 
I'm coming off a fresh boot camp install from last night , so it's still fresh in memory.

This is XP I hope, cause I'm going to explain XP

After creating the bootcamp partition and inserting the windows disk, it does it's thing where it copies a bunch of drivers and whatnot it should then prompt you to install windows and you're prompted with several partitions to choose from , the last being BOOTCAMP.

Select the BootCamp partition and hit enter. you're then prompted to quick format the disk FAT32 or NTFS , fully format or leave the disk intact ... I picked the option to quick format FAT32 , if you don't format, you will get a Disk Error.

after you do this, it should proceed right through and copy files, reboot and do the install.
 
Thats the problem, though - I don't get the option to format NTFS or FAT32 as I did when I was running Tiger/BootCamp 1.4.

From what I've read this is common - but if you did a fresh install of Leopard, why aren't you running into the same thing...

Highly aggravating.
 
enklined said:
Thats the problem, though - I don't get the option to format NTFS or FAT32 as I did when I was running Tiger/BootCamp 1.4.

From what I've read this is common - but if you did a fresh install of Leopard, why aren't you running into the same thing...

Highly aggravating.
Click to expand...

Your not alone, I'm running into the same issue as well.

I do reformat the Windows Partition made by Bootcamp via the XP Installer, to format it "Quick NTFS" but still no Luck.

I was getting the "Disk Error" but now I'm getting an error after the installation saying Missing or Invalid hal.dll file...

Grrrrrr
 
Yea, this is lame. And I have not the time to wait for a patch of some sort...

Going to try and reinstall Leopard and see what happeneds - doubt anything will change.

If that doesn't work, I'll going to try and remove BC 2.0 and install BC 1.4 - not sure if its even possible.

If nothing else, then Tiger and BC 1.4 go back on, then upgrade to Leopard (as I had originally done the first time, so I know that works).

I'll keep you posted. If anyone hears about a solution, please don't hesitate to post (I've read one solution involving the recovery screen during the Windows Setup, but apparently that's not available to me, either).
 
Add me to the list. I'm now running Windows XP SP2 under Parallels on my new MBP. I picked up my MBP on October 26, when Apple shut down the download for bootcamp. Normally I won't use a new OS uniil the first major upgrade, but we went to Leopard to do a bootcamp install & had gthe same problems described here. I would prefer to use Bootcamp. My dealer is a very sharp guy - we're baffled.

My whole tale is on this thread of similar problems:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/379078/
 
I encountered a pair of related BootCamp issues under Leopard. First, I was told that I couldn't partition my drive because some files could not be moved. Did a clean reinstall of Leopard and restored from my Time Machine backup, which fixed that. Then, after I started the Windows install process, I selected "Convert the filesystem to NTFS". Windows installs, then I get the dreaded DISK ERROR message. I restart, format the C: partition as NTFS, and try again. This time, it works.
 
no problem here
I did a erase/install for leopard
and installed windows xp SERVICE PACK 2 afterwards
it's running fine.
 
can i format the partition in disk utility to NTFS and then reboot? i keep getting the disk error. please, i wanna play BF2😀
 
joemama2413 said:
can i format the partition in disk utility to NTFS and then reboot? i keep getting the disk error. please, i wanna play BF2😀
Click to expand...

I don't think disk utility can create NTFS partitions.

I was able to get Boot Camp to work by having the Windows installer do a full format of the FAT32 partition Boot Camp created.
 
Reinstall XP

I've used both of the methods below on new and old Macs so I'm reasonably certain that it works and that I've left nothing out.

Method 1: 32GB XP FAT32 partition that you can write to from OS X.
1. Boot up in Leopard and use the Boot Camp Assistant to create a 32GB partition (notice the button that makes it convenient to do so).

But I've got a 1TB drive in my super Mac... why only 32GB?
Because FAT32's maximum size is 32GB.

But I really really want a fat drive because I download a lot of crap when using XP!
Then use the NTFS method below but realize that you can only read when on OS X.

2. Follow the instructions in Leopard's Boot Camp Assistant: insert the XP CD and press the restart button (in BCA).

3. Go through the antiquated XP installation procedure. When you arrive at the partition selection you will notice that there is a partition called C: BOOT CAMP. Use it.

4. XP installer will now ask you what you want to do with it. You want to format it. I used the full format option (as opposed to quick) on a 32GB FAT32 partition and it works fine. YOU NEED TO FORMAT THE DRIVE.

5. Install the OS, reboot a few times, install anti-virus, install the updates, reboot a dozen more times, install more updates, and after a few hours and a few hundred megs of updates you should be ready to go.

Tip: transport data between the two OSes by using a USB-drive!


Method 2: Two partitions: one large partition for XP and Program Files and a 32GB partition for storing your user data which you have R/W access from OS X as well as XP.
1. Boot up in Leopard and use the Boot Camp Assistant to create a NTFS partition as big as you want. Take the total size of the area of the drive that you will be dedicating to XP and subtract 32GB (IE: 100GB for XP minus 32GB = 68GB)

2. Follow the instructions in Leopard's Boot Camp Assistant: insert the XP CD and press the restart button (in BCA).

3. Go through the antiquated XP installation procedure. When you arrive at the partition selection you will notice that there is a partition called C: BOOT CAMP. Use it.

4. XP installer will now ask you what you want to do with it. You want to format it. I used the full format option (as opposed to quick) and it works fine.

5. After I downloaded the 90+ updates for XP and almost gouged out my eyes from looking at that awful GUI I rebooted into lovely OS X and created another partition: FAT32 @ 32GB (for user docs and other crap that I want to access from both operating systems).

6. Revel in the fact that you are now so much smarter than your friends because you have now embedded this knowledge in your lobes.

🙂
 
For any one of you having problems, did you try installing Windows SP1 or SP2?

If you used SP1 and tried installing...then I'm afraid I have some bad news for you...
 
damn, i hope this issue gets resolved! Do you think it could be a copy of our particular windows or should we try another one?
 
I have had the disk error and hal.dll problems. Both resolved by

1. Reformatting the Boot Camp partition during XP SP2 installation (boot camp instructions specifically say you must reformat it). Disk error seemed to be related to this.
2. Quickformatting FAT32 (I had problems everytime I tried NTFS). Hal.dll seemed to be related to this. I never used NTFS with Boot Camp beta so I don't know if this is a new problem or old.
 
SP1 wont work?

So service pack 1 will not wont work eh? Ive tried all different ways.. got the most out of reformating with windows FAT32 at 32Gig, then i get a blue screen of death mid way through the copy file process.. any ideas? And if i do need a XP SP2 then can i still use my same activation code?

CBAviator said:
For any one of you having problems, did you try installing Windows SP1 or SP2?

If you used SP1 and tried installing...then I'm afraid I have some bad news for you...
Click to expand...
 
zmanring said:
So service pack 1 will not wont work eh? Ive tried all different ways.. got the most out of reformating with windows FAT32 at 32Gig, then i get a blue screen of death mid way through the copy file process.. any ideas? And if i do need a XP SP2 then can i still use my same activation code?
Click to expand...
No, because you can't install SP1 and then update it to SP2. That doesn't work... so you'll have to buy a retail copy of Windows XP SP2 and install that. Therefore, there's no way you can use your same activation code.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
No, because you can't install SP1 and then update it to SP2. That doesn't work... so you'll have to buy a retail copy of Windows XP SP2 and install that. Therefore, there's no way you can use your same activation code.
Click to expand...
This is incorrect--he doesn't have to buy a new copy of XP SP2. This issue has been dealt with dozens of times already in this forum. What one needs to do is "slipstream" the SP2 changes into the SP1 or original-flavor XP install by following the instructions here.

Concerning the missing hal.dll issue mentioned by other posters, this has also been covered already in this forum and googling "hal.dll missing" will bring up dozens of links with the solution (you don't have to reinstall XP). For a start, look here. Have fun!
 
I'm surprised I'm not the only one with the disk error.
I think I'll just lay off installing windows until this gets fixed.
 
Old problem...

astewart said:
I'm getting an error after the installation saying Missing or Invalid hal.dll file...

Grrrrrr
Click to expand...

Well, that sounds better for u. I documented a fix for this on the Parallels forum awhile back, as it's a bootcamp virtualization startup problem where the half-dozen files that get written to the /windows dir on boot get corrupted or just don't get there at all. the easy quick-fix is to just take the files from your backup of when it worked and replace those files that get updated - or not in your case - easy to tell by the date. Hope that helps.

Now to figure out how to backup and restore the XP partition, which is on a GUID map disk and no tools to read it in XP!!!!
 
VideoFreek said:
This is incorrect--he doesn't have to buy a new copy of XP SP2. This issue has been dealt with dozens of times already in this forum. What one needs to do is "slipstream" the SP2 changes into the SP1 or original-flavor XP install by following the instructions here.

Concerning the missing hal.dll issue mentioned by other posters, this has also been covered already in this forum and googling "hal.dll missing" will bring up dozens of links with the solution (you don't have to reinstall XP). For a start, look here. Have fun!
Click to expand...
I know about this, actually... but you need a Windows installation somewhere else in order to do it. Not everyone has this available... fortunately, I do. Sorry for the bad information. 😱
 
I was stuck in this too. The problem was that I selected the "Don't format the partition" while selecting partition during the Windows install.
When I selected NTFS formatting there was no ploblems. 🙂
 
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