Boot Camp Partition Problem

[mowenbrown]

I have a MBP with the 160 gig had option - of the 149 gigs that are usable, about 38 are free and I haven't created any partitions. This computer is coming up on its third birthday. I wanted to install XP on boot camp, so I got a copy of windows, printed the guide and sat down to work. Off the bat I got the following error:

(having image issues - the error says "Back up the volume and format it as a single OS X Extended (Journaled) volume and try again restore your information and try again)

I then tried a few things:
1. In disk utilities I repaired disk permissions/verified disk (no issues)/erased free space and tried again.
2. Again in disk utilities, I tried to create a simple 5 gig second partition on the drive to see if I could do it outside of boot camp assistant.

Trying to create a second partition caused this error to appear:

(having image issues - the error says I can not creat a 2nd partition)

I am not sure what to do next. It seems odd that a drive with 38 gigs can't add a five gig partition. I was thinking of doing one of the two things:
1. Reinstall OS X and restore from boot camp; or,
2. Buy iDefrag and defrag the disk.

Does anyone have any thoughts or alternative solutions?

Thanks.

 

[shiningabyss16]

Try This

Seems like you have formatted the drive in two partitions. It looks like boot camp cannot find space on the current partition to create the boot camp partition. Unless you have two OSX operating systems on the drive, I would recommend you remove the second partition and format it as free space. Then try bootcamp again. If all fails then I would recommend you do an Archive install and partition the whole drive for Mac OSX. Then run boot camp after you have done the install. Make sure you backup all your data if you can on another media just to be on the safe side.

 

[mowenbrown]

Seems like you have formatted the drive in two partitions. It looks like boot camp cannot find space on the current partition to create the boot camp partition. Unless you have two OSX operating systems on the drive, I would recommend you remove the second partition and format it as free space. Then try bootcamp again. If all fails then I would recommend you do an Archive install and partition the whole drive for Mac OSX. Then run boot camp after you have done the install. Make sure you backup all your data if you can on another media just to be on the safe side.

Actually in that last screen shot I was trying to create a second partition just to see if disk utility could do it.... I couldn't and quit half way through. My plan there was to create a partition and erase it having read somewhere that this would force OS X to clean up the drive - meaning once I had created the partition I could delete is and not have the same space issues. I think the archive/install or install from scratch and use time machine may be the way I go.....

 

[mowenbrown]

Seems like you have formatted the drive in two partitions. It looks like boot camp cannot find space on the current partition to create the boot camp partition. Unless you have two OSX operating systems on the drive, I would recommend you remove the second partition and format it as free space. Then try bootcamp again. If all fails then I would recommend you do an Archive install and partition the whole drive for Mac OSX. Then run boot camp after you have done the install. Make sure you backup all your data if you can on another media just to be on the safe side.

Funny, archive and install ddin't fix the issue; but, erase and install did.odd.