Can't Boot Windows Anymore on Dualbooted iMac

[srsfalconrko]

Hello,

I'm not really savvy with Macs so I'm really lost here. I have an iMac (21.5" late 2010) which when I got I dual-booted with OS X and Windows 7. It's run fine with both operating systems for almost 2 years now.
This past week for a school project I needed to work with Snow Leopard instead of Lion, so I partitioned my Lion HD and set aside around 100GB to install Snow Leopard. Since I made the partition I haven't been able to boot to my Windows hard drive at all. When I turn on my computer and hold the "Option" key, Windows 7 is no longer an option to boot to. In Lion when I go under Startup Disk and try to restart in Windows 7 HD, the computer shuts down and when it boots up has a black screen and says "No bootable device - insert boot disk and press any key."
In Lion I can still see the Windows 7 HD on the desktop, I can access all the files in it, and I can eject the hard drive.
I attached a screenshot of my disk utility if it helps, I deleted the Snow Leopard partition I made so now it's just Windows 7 and Lion again.

 

[\-V-/]

You probably corrupted your Windows partition when you created another partition for Snow Leopard. May I ask what you needed to do in Snow Leopard that Lion couldn't do?

In any case, you may need to reinstall Windows again. Back up what you can beforehand of course. You should also keep a backup of your OS X files... people (including myself) have had the OS X partition randomly become corrupt and un-bootable. Hardware is prone to random issues, so these things can happen.

 

[Jessica Lares]

You probably corrupted your Windows partition when you created another partition for Snow Leopard.

This is exactly your problem. I actually did the same the other week with the same result - Corrupted Windows that turns into a folder.

 

[\-V-/]

This is exactly your problem. I actually did the same the other week with the same result - Corrupted Windows that turns into a folder.

The same happened with me as well. I've since stopped being partition happy when dealing with multiple OS's. I always end up getting burned.

 

[techguy20]

Other posters are correct.

I would recommend going through the Bootcamp drive, backing up what you need, and then deleting/recreating the Bootcamp partition with the Bootcamp Utility. As much as a pain as it is, that is usually easier than trying to fix it (sometimes not even possible).

Tri-boot on a Mac is possible, but I believe it would require a third-party EFI such as rEFIt, which you may want to look into.

I would recommend putting Snow Leopard in a Virtual Machine (VMWare) if you truly need it; otherwise, keep it dual boot and stick with Lion.