Can't start Windows from Bootcamp

Hello,

I'm hoping you can help? I can't boot into my Windows Bootcamp partition.

I am running Mavericks and Windows 7 Home Premium. All applicable service packs have been installed. I have a mid 2012 rMBP.

I haven't been mucking around with my boot partitions. The last time I checked I booted into Windows fine, came to do it today and no show. When I hold down the Option key on restart OSX does not show me a Windows partition to boot from. I have a little menubar utility called Bootchamp which does a one time boot of Windows, when I click this I get this error message on restart:- 'No bootable device', insert boot disk or some such.

In OSX I can see my Bootcamp partition and data. In Repair Utility under OSX I can see the partitioned Bootcamp. Under the Recovery partition I can see Bootcamp and run Repair disk on my whole disk. It just won’t boot.

I have spent some time searching the internet and I think I have a hosed Windows 7 MBR. Based on what other people have said in other threads I have downloaded gdisk and refit but I don’t understand how to use either.

Being a Macbook I don’t have a CD drive so can’t use the Windows Repair utility off my disk (but reading other posts I don’t think I even should).

What do I do to get this working?

Thanks.

 

Thanks for getting back to me.

Yes, I had successfully used Windows after my Mavericks install a number of times. I installed Mavericks on the 22nd of October, I last booted into my Bootcamp partition on the 28th of December.

The link you provided is one of those I have read, and to be honest it's a little bit over my head.

 

An update.

I also run Parallels and have another Windows virtual partition. So with a Win 7 ISO I downloaded from Digital River I created a bootable Win 7 USB key under this Win virtual machine using the MS tool. The key wasn't detected at all on boot up so I could't select it.

But using the same idea I used the OS X Bootcamp tool to create a bootable key using the same ISO. It was detected on boot up and I could boot into Win 7 off it, but when I selected 'Repair' (as opposed to install a new version of Windows) I received an error message, 'This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair'. I cursed, back to square one.

My results from the commands you mentioned (I had to omit the last colon to get it to work):-

Disk: /dev/rdisk0 geometry: 91337/255/63 [1467339812 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 1467339811] <Unknown ID>
2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

And the second:-

Disk: /dev/rdisk0 geometry: 91337/255/63 [1467339812 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 1467339811] <Unknown ID>
2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
Macintosh:~ stephen[removed]$ sudo gpt -r -vv show /dev/rdisk0
gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: mediasize=751277983744; sectorsize=512; blocks=1467339812
gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: Sec GPT at sector 1467339811
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
409640 1172520960 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1172930600 4056
1172934656 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1174204192 224
1174204416 293134336 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
1467338752 1027
1467339779 32 Sec GPT table
1467339811 1 Sec GPT header

 

Oh. Just tried something else.

I can access my Bootcamp partition and run Windows from within Parallels under OSX.

 

I ended up deleting my Bootcamp partition and re-installing, I don't keep any important data on there (all of that gets backed up to my NAS via Time Machine). It was a pain to upgrade with all the hot fixes though, why can't they do it like Apple?

And why does Windows suck so much in the first place? [rant over]