Can't boot Bootcamp partition after 10.8 Update

Is it available in system preferences / startup disk ?

 

There is. It requires patience and a steady hand. Please post the results from the following (ready-only) commands. In the forum message window, highlight the pasted text, click on the # button in the toolbar to add code tags so the results format correctly.

Code:

sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0
sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

 

I have no idea how you arrived at such a partition scheme. It's non-standard.

Code:

Partition     Yours             Normal
    1         Windows           EFI System
    2         RecoveryHD        Macintosh HD
    3         MacintoshHD       RecoveryHD
    4         RecoveryHD        Windows
    5         EFI System        none

The easiest way for you to fix this, seriously, is to backup and restore Mac OS and Windows (noting that it's usually separate backup and restores for Windows as Time Machine will not back it up). It's so completely backwards.

The instructions for moving all of these partitions around would be complicated to write out, and as complicated to follow. Plus, there is no good way to protect the GPT itself since EFI System partition isn't first.

It is possible to make Windows bootable again in the meantime. Just be warned that this could make the computer unbootable so if you have other ways to make backups first, now is the time, before you do this...

Follow each line with a return:

Code:

sudo fdisk -e /dev/disk0
edit 1
07
n
34
419543865
edit 2
EE
n
419543899
<return/enter>         [return or enter button to accept default]
flag 1
quit
y

If you don't understand something or get stuck or make a mistake, either use control-c or use the exit command instead of quit. The command quite writes changes to disk.

Once you're done:

Code:

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Post the results so I can confirm it's correct.

 

No because I have no idea if you'll screw up, let alone how. If you mess up the MBR, fortunately Mac OS X ignores it in favor of the GPT and at least it should still boot even if Windows won't. But you already have that problem so it's kindof low risk at this point. And even if you totally mess up the MBR, you in effect have backed up partition maps by virtue of posting them to the forum.

Your Windows partition is 200GB. If you have a spare 200GB somewhere, it's possible to sector copy that entire Windows partition without any additional software into a mountable disk image file, mountable within Mac OS X so you can extract whatever data you want, if it comes to it.

My suggestion is that you proceed with the instructions I wrote out, and then also post the results of the last fdisk command so I can confirm the MBR is correct before you attempt a reboot.

 

@PNayo92

Yeah that looks good. So now let's hope that Apple's EFI and CSM aren't fussy about the 0xEE partition not being first in the MBR. Go ahead and reboot, holding down the option key, see if you get a Mac icon, and a Windows icon, and see if both of them work.

 

If you reboot and do nothing (do not hold the option key), what happens? Mac OS? Or the failed Windows boot?

The article on how to do that is here. What you have is a Windows volume that has been moved around for some reason, and so the bootloaders and/or BCD are broken. But before repairing Windows I want to know if you can even boot Mac OS X, because if you can't that should be fixed first.

 

OK so it appears that Apple's EFI or CSM will choose to ignore the GPT entirely if the 1st entry of the MBR is not 0xEE. Irritating.

So you either need to boot this computer with a DVD, any version of Mac OS will do, and get to Terminal. Or you need to attach this computer booted in Firewire target disk mode, to another Mac. I'll write up new fdisk instructions and we'll see if that makes both OS's work...

 

It's possible the disk will not be /dev/disk0, it might be /dev/disk1 or /dev/disk2, depending on how you've had to boot. Use this command:

Code:

diskutil list

and should be able to find your disk based on the partitions/names. I'm going to assume disk0 but you'll need to use the correct designation for this first command:

Code:

fdisk -e /dev/disk0
edit 1
EE
n
1
33
edit 2
07
n
<return/enter>          [accept default of 34]
419543865
edit 3
AB
n
<return/enter>          [accept default of 419543899]
1269536
edit 4
AF
n
<return/enter>          [accept default of 420813435]
1042656544
flag 2
quit
y

Go ahead and reboot and see if you get both Windows and Mac OS options. I'm hoping for three, actually, including one of the Recovery HDs.

Thing is, MBR only has four entries and you have five (plus GPT equals six) that are needed. So I can't fully protect the disk. Hopefully you can boot Windows and Mac OS, get backups, and blow away this whole disk and restore it correctly with all of the partitions in the proper order.

If you get stuck, write back, but I'm unlikely to respond until much later night or tomorrow.

 

Code:

diskutil list

That will list all devices, and their partitions, the very first line will be /dev/diskX where X is either 0, 1, 2, etc.

 

Doesn't matter what the cause is. You just need to go through the steps to restore the bootloaders, and possibly reconstruct the BCD as well. To me, this looks like these were transferred from another disk. It's exceptionally difficult to use one disk and rearrange the partitions.

I'd get the data off Windows and Mac OS partitions as soon as practical, and start from scratch with this disk (definitely it needs to be repartitioned so that the MBR and GPT are created from scratch, as well as a new EFI System partition which will be created first, automatically and will be invisible in Disk Utility). How you restore your data depends on how you back up...obviously. Just make sure Mac OS is first and Windows is the last partition.

 

No idea. I'm not much of a Windows expert. Partitions, bootloaders, linux...not Windows.

When you boot from the Mountain Lion installation image, you get a menu, one of which is Disk Utility. You choose the drive, choose the Partition tab, and change the scheme from Current to 1 Partition. Poof.

Yes. Winclone can do it. Or even through the Finder in Mac OS you can read-only the Windows volume and get your data (only) out. Or you can make a disk image out of the Windows partition if you have space for that big of a file somewhere...

Quite honestly, all of your problems, and the challenge with backup and restore, etc. it's so complicated that it's why I don't use Boot Camp. I use Virtual Box and run these OS's in VM. Unless you're playing games, the performance is very close to running natively. And it's nowhere near this hard. The one gotcha with VM is that the VM's virtual disk, if one file changes, the whole virtual disk image appears to be a changed file from Time Machine's perspective - and that virtual disk image is ~20-50GB, so it's big. That's a lot to back up everytime. So a way around this is to get everything in Windows configured/installed the way you want, then make a snapshot. That freezes the original virtual disk image, and uses a 2nd one for additional changes and that's a VASTLY smaller file.

Or you can exclude the virtual disk from Time Machine backup, and just copy the virtual disk image manually to your Time Machine drive every now and then.

 

I can't tell you why this is happening, as I've never experienced the GUI turning all white and then rebooting unprompted. That's pretty weird. But file system corruption can manifest in all sort of bizarre ways, as can hardware problems.

Try booting with Safe Boot again, holding down the shift key at the startup chime, and let it run. Then try backing up again. You don't have much to lose by trying. Only one attempt needs to work, then you can move on.

Another option is to sector copy the Windows and Mac OS X partitions into mountable disk images, and you can deal with extracting your data from those images later. That would require 200GB and 500GB respectively, which is not space efficient, but can be done booted from a Lion/MLion install DVD – neither Mac OS nor Windows need to be mounted to do sector copies (actually, in fact they need to be unmounted).

I'd personally zero this disk also - that removes bad sectors from use, if there are any. I really wish it were easier to get smartmontools installed on Mac OS X - the tools are free open source and use SMART diagnostics built into every hard drive to see if they're having problems.

Does the forum accept binary attachments? Probably not... potential for malware I suppose.

 

I don't know.

It's worth booting off a Windows DVD and running chkdsk, and chkdsk /p until it no longer finds problems. I think the Startup Repair option does a chkdsk /r along with the bootloader repairs you were attempting manually, because Startup Repair can take hours. But at least it offers a GUI.