Boot Camp Issue - Can't get past the first step

[14andrewr]

Hi
I am trying to installing Windows 7 on my Mac-book Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 but i cannot get past the step where you Download Windows Support Software and no matter what option i click, when i click continue i get the message:
The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.
The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.

I then go to the "disk utility" and i only have 1 partition.
It has the drive name of "500gb st95..." then under that "Macintosh HD". Then the cd drive. Thats all
Has this happened to anyone else? Can anyone help? and i dont want to have to reinstall the entire partition.

 

[sleky]

Me too.... I've tried the 'repair' approach, that didn't work. I've read that a defrag needs to be done. Really? A defrag? =[ Did you, or anyone else know what the issue might be?

Any boot camp logs? I have no issue reading logs... But which ones? TIA

 

[Rho]

The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.
The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.

Hey.

Sorry if you've already fixed the problem, but I had the exact same thing.
Starting up your Mac with the MacOS CD in and holding S during start-up, use the Utility Disk to repair your drive. Alternately, if your CD is damaged (like mine, hooray), start up your Mac holding command + S, then type in something like "/sbin/fcsk -fy", which acts in the exact same way as the Disk Repair function, but more Matrix-y. (As for the exact thing you need to type in, it says so like.. 5 lines above where you have to type in the black screen.)

Anyway, this did the trick for me.

 

[14andrewr]

Thanks but no good

Thanks Rho, i tried that but it said that my disk was OK. and when i tried to use boot camp i got the same error. Anything else that might help?

 

[(L)SD]

Simple answer, but they hide it

When you get to that point and it won't let you use any partition, even the one you just made(!) there's something at the bottom of that area, I can't remember the term it said, but you click on it and it will ask "Format this partition?" or something like that. All it needs is for your partion to be formated which IT WILL DO FOR YOU, but they don't mention that in the Boot camp tutorial. I think it needs to be Fat32..?
I have an iMac 10.7.2.

 

[murphychris]

Go to terminal and type:

diskutil list

And also:

diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk[B]X[/B]s[B]Y[/B] limits

Replace the X and Y with the disk number and slice (partition) for your Mac OS volume, listed under the column "Identifier" in the previous list results. e.g. disk0s2.

And also:

df -h

Please post all three results here, formatted with the "

" tag. (Highlight the results only, and then click on the # button in the tool bar.)

 

[14andrewr]

Did as you asked

******-Andrew:~ 14andrewr$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
Robinson-Andrew:~ 14andrewr$ diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk0s3 limits
Volume format does not support resizing
********-Andrew:~ 14andrewr$ df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2   465Gi  123Gi  341Gi    27%    /
devfs          191Ki  191Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev
map -hosts       0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /net
map auto_home    0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /home
/dev/disk0s3   620Mi  492Mi  128Mi    80%    /private/var/folders/lx/lxL6gaLiGLKpKhFPi+tmaE+++TM/-Tmp-/StartupDisk-049DD97F-8706-3783-8FCE-503F40B6AD40
*********-Andrew:~ 14andrewr$

 

[xlii]

Me too.... I've tried the 'repair' approach, that didn't work. I've read that a defrag needs to be done. Really? A defrag? =[ Did you, or anyone else know what the issue might be?

Any boot camp logs? I have no issue reading logs... But which ones? TIA

How large do you want to make the windows partition? Bootcamp will make the windows partition for you but it will not move data around on the disk. If you wanted to make a 100 GB windows partition you would need 100GB of contiguous unused space on you disk. If you do not have that you will get that error message.

What I did to fix that in my case was to take a time machine backup and then do a time machine restore. This wiped my disk, then restored my data but now I had more than 100 GB of contiguous space and was able to now use Bootcamp to partition my drive and install windows 7.

If this is not you problem my apologies. I only used 100 GB as an example size to use.

----------

Here is an easy experiment for you to try to see if it is the problem of not enough contiguous free space. Using bootcamp create a partition of 10 GB. That should work as you have a lot of free space (you are only using about 125 GB out of 500 GB. If it doesn't work you most likely have another problem and using the time machine backup and restore method won't help you.

 

[14andrewr]

Issue

The thing is i cant even get up to the stage where i can select the size of the partition i want to make. I get to the first step and click next then the message popped up. I literally selected nothing at all. thanks for your help but i dont have an apple time machine thingo an it seems apple cant do it onto an external harddrive

 

[xlii]

You are not alone. I googled: the startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition and came up with this:

http://technologicalities.blogspot.com/2009/06/startup-disk-cannot-be-partitioned-or.html

be sure to read the replies as they might be more helpful that the original answer.

----------

The thing is i cant even get up to the stage where i can select the size of the partition i want to make. I get to the first step and click next then the message popped up. I literally selected nothing at all. thanks for your help but i dont have an apple time machine thingo an it seems apple cant do it onto an external harddrive

I strongly suggest backing up your data on every machine you use. Things happen... and sooner or later it happens to all of us. At some point you will be very happy to have a backup of your machine that you can restore from.

 

[Yujenisis]

What I did to fix that in my case was to take a time machine backup and then do a time machine restore. This wiped my disk, then restored my data but now I had more than 100 GB of contiguous space and was able to now use Bootcamp to partition my drive and install windows 7.

Xlii is right. Every time I have come across this issue on machines at work restoring from a Time Machine back up, lines up data in a contiguous manner allowing for your to utilize the maximum space possible for partitioning.

Running a full defragmentation of the will take as long as making a brand new Time Machine backup, possibly not fix the issue, and put your data at risk during the process.

Ask any nerd: You should always be backing up.

 

[14andrewr]

Xlii is right. Every time I have come across this issue on machines at work restoring from a Time Machine back up, lines up data in a contiguous manner allowing for your to utilize the maximum space possible for partitioning.

Running a full defragmentation of the will take as long as making a brand new Time Machine backup, possibly not fix the issue, and put your data at risk during the process.

Ask any nerd: You should always be backing up.

Do I have to buy like apple time machine or to back up can i just use a portable harddrive, i dont really want to be spending a lot of money on this??

 

[xlii]

Do I have to buy like apple time machine or to back up can i just use a portable harddrive, i dont really want to be spending a lot of money on this??

Time machine.app is a program that comes with Snow Leopard, so you already have it on your machine. It is located in your application folder. If you have an external drive (usb or firewire) you can use that to do a backup of your stuff. It is very easy to use. Just read the help on Time Machine.app and you will know how to use it.

 

[Yujenisis]

Do I have to buy like apple time machine or to back up can i just use a portable harddrive, i dont really want to be spending a lot of money on this??

Any external hard drive of equal size or greater to your internal drive will work.

You do not have the purchase the Time Capsule.

 

[14andrewr]

Thanks

Any external hard drive of equal size or greater to your internal drive will work.

You do not have the purchase the Time Capsule.

Thanks guys im going to try this now and see if it works

 

[Yujenisis]

Let us know how it goes.

And good luck!

 

[14andrewr]

bad news

so far this is what i have done:
Done a repair of the disk and the permissions in disk utility after holding down command + r on start up.
Done a complete restore from time machine on the command + r place
tried to manually partition my harddrive but it says that i need a newer version of MAC OS X to do that
any ideas?

 

[xlii]

******-Andrew:~ 14andrewr$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.1 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
Robinson-Andrew:~ 14andrewr$ diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk0s3 limits
Volume format does not support resizing
********-Andrew:~ 14andrewr$ df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2   465Gi  123Gi  341Gi    27%    /
devfs          191Ki  191Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev
map -hosts       0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /net
map auto_home    0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /home
/dev/disk0s3   620Mi  492Mi  128Mi    80%    /private/var/folders/lx/lxL6gaLiGLKpKhFPi+tmaE+++TM/-Tmp-/StartupDisk-049DD97F-8706-3783-8FCE-503F40B6AD40
*********-Andrew:~ 14andrewr$

I wonder... you are running Snow Leopard but yet you have your disk partitioned as if Lion is on it. You should be installing 10.7 and then you could run bootcamp and partition. The question is why do you have the recovery partition on your machine. Were you once running 10.7 (Lion).

 

[14andrewr]

School

I wonder... you are running Snow Leopard but yet you have your disk partitioned as if Lion is on it. You should be installing 10.7 and then you could run bootcamp and partition. The question is why do you have the recovery partition on your machine. Were you once running 10.7 (Lion).

I wondered that, because when i go into the recovery mode ( command + r on start up) it has an option to reinstall lion.... its weird.
I actually bought my laptop through my school - which i wish i didnt know - and it means that they didnt give me any of the CD's that ive been hearing about so even if i wanted to completely erase my disk and reinstall, ive got nothing to reinstall with....

 

[xlii]

I wondered that, because when i go into the recovery mode ( command + r on start up) it has an option to reinstall lion.... its weird.
I actually bought my laptop through my school - which i wish i didnt know - and it means that they didnt give me any of the CD's that ive been hearing about so even if i wanted to completely erase my disk and reinstall, ive got nothing to reinstall with....

That is odd... did you buy it new or was it used. Was it sealed in a box? If it is a 2011 model it might not come with disks as it would have shipped with Lion installed.

Last suggestion... if you are still in school your IT department should be able to help you out. If not, I suggest a trip to an Apple Store... they should be able to take a look at your machine and give you some help.