Help, maybe :(

[Wyvernspirit]

I think boot camp hosed my drive, the only thing I can do is to try to install windows. In disk utility on the leopard DVD shows my hard drive as unpartitioned.

Is there anything I can do other then reinstall?

Am on iPhone so difficult to do full search, sorry.

Not sure of what I will lose, have a back up on old comp, but not a full back up plus everything I have done in the past couple days.



Ok so I guess no one has an answer, so I guess I start over. Is there anything I should do to make it work better? Special partitioning ahead of installation?

Anyways, I won't get home for 3 hours so maybe someone comes up with something between now and then.

 

[ninjapenguin]

What is the name of the single partition that the leopard disk sees? Is in the Macintosh HD? Because all that I can think of is that you might have made the entire partition into FAT32.

 

[JNB]

Print, read, & follow the Boot Camp & Installation Setup Guide. Works every time.

 

[Wyvernspirit]

Print, read, & follow the Boot Camp & Installation Setup Guide. Works every time.

I did this. I had tried to set the windows partition to 24gb and had booted into the installer. When I got to the part about which partition I wanted to install on I had two choices neither of which came close to 24 gb ( about 100 gb each). So I tried to back out and see what was going on and, all it would do is go to "windows." so I used option on start up and found no mac partition.

Perhaps I should have tried the install anyways?

 

[Wyvernspirit]

What is the name of the single partition that the leopard disk sees? Is in the Macintosh HD? Because all that I can think of is that you might have made the entire partition into FAT32.

Unforunately there is no name listed. The hard drive reports as unpartitioned

 

[Wyvernspirit]

Well I tried reinstalling last night, and got a working drive up and running. I then tried to do the bootcamp thing again, and it did the same thing, but worse. Windows install rewrote the whole drive and caused it to be read only for the leopard install disk, so I couldn't even reinstall leopard. Called Apple Support, and after a few questions, being on hold for about an hour, they told me I had to go to an apple store to get the computer fixed as they couldn't do anything else (this after an acceleration to an iMac specialist). She said that they will need to replace the Hard Drive because it was in a read only state so that probably meant it was damaged.

The nearest Apple store is an hour+ away. The soonest I could go is sunday. So I tried one last thing, loaded the windows install disk, and when I got to the part about picking the partition, I just erased it, and left it blank space, went back to the leopard install, and... had full access to reinstall.

Now I am crossing my fingers, but everything seems to be working again. It would seem that I fixed something apple couldn't, but it was just a hunch on my part.

I am not going to play around with bootcamp right now. The apple support specialist thinks my disk might not have been a proper disk, which is what I am going on right now.

Thanks

 

[JNB]

I'd sure love to see a screen shot of the Windows installation partitioning choices. Somethin' definitely ain't right.

An interesting experiment is to dynamically resize the Mac partition in Disk Utility. If that works, I think we'd have eliminated the drive as a problem (which I still don't necessarily buy). Unless your BC Assistant is totally borking the partitioning--which is possible, there's a first time for everything, I suppose--there's a piece missing here.

Keep us posted.

 

[Wyvernspirit]

I'm not sure I would blame boot camp. It may very well be that there is something wrong with my windows disk that is causing the issue. That is what the support specialist thought.

 

[CWallace]

A few points:

First, you can always run Disk Utility from the OS X CD to view and repartition your HDD. So you could have just deleted your existing partition(s) and create a new one to then format with OS X Journaled and install Leopard. You did not need to boot Windows installer to do it, though it did work, which is good.

Second, after Boot Camp assistant partitions your disc and formats the new partition as FAT32, it should show up at the bottom of the list of drives in Windows installer. You should see one or two drives listed above it saying "Unpartitioned or Unrecognized file system" - these are your OS X Journaled partitions.

Third, I had issues installing Windows to the partition if I left it formatted in FAT32 by Boot Camp (no issues with NTFS). Windows would copy files to it, but then could not boot. So I select the FAT32 partition and choose "Format as FAT (Quick)". This re-formats it in Windows' FAT32 and it works like a charm.

Fourth, when in doubt quit the Windows install (F3, I believe) and reboot, holding down the Option key to get back into OS X to then make some checks.

 

[JNB]

Third, I had issues installing Windows to the partition if I left it formatted in FAT32 by Boot Camp (no issues with NTFS). Windows would copy files to it, but then could not boot. So I select the FAT32 partition and choose "Format as FAT (Quick)". This re-formats it in Windows' FAT32 and it works like a charm.

Per the Installation Guide, reformatting by the Windows Installer is required (and full vs. quick is recommended).

That's why I always respond to these things with the "print, read, follow" comment. Short of an actual failure somewhere, the only times folks seem to have problems is when they don't do that.

 

[Wyvernspirit]

A few points:

First, you can always run Disk Utility from the OS X CD to view and repartition your HDD. So you could have just deleted your existing partition(s) and create a new one to then format with OS X Journaled and install Leopard. You did not need to boot Windows installer to do it, though it did work, which is good.

Second, after Boot Camp assistant partitions your disc and formats the new partition as FAT32, it should show up at the bottom of the list of drives in Windows installer. You should see one or two drives listed above it saying "Unpartitioned or Unrecognized file system" - these are your OS X Journaled partitions.

Third, I had issues installing Windows to the partition if I left it formatted in FAT32 by Boot Camp (no issues with NTFS). Windows would copy files to it, but then could not boot. So I select the FAT32 partition and choose "Format as FAT (Quick)". This re-formats it in Windows' FAT32 and it works like a charm.

Fourth, when in doubt quit the Windows install (F3, I believe) and reboot, holding down the Option key to get back into OS X to then make some checks.

As response:

First, Disk utility would NOT reformat my drive, it was reading it as read only, this is why the apple service rep said it needed to be replaced. So I could not just delete the partition using the Leopard disk and I DID need the windows disk to do this.

Second and Third, I wanted to keep the formatting FAT32, but the windows install gave me only two choices, NTFS (Quick) and install and NTFS and install. The second time I tried to install the installer only showed one partition to intall on, I can't remember what it was formatted to, but was labeled BOOTCAMP.

Forth, using option at boot gave me no choices unless I had a CD/DVD in. Then that would show up as the only choice.

Per the Installation Guide, reformatting by the Windows Installer is required (and full vs. quick is recommended).

That's why I always respond to these things with the "print, read, follow" comment. Short of an actual failure somewhere, the only times folks seem to have problems is when they don't do that.

I didn't print it per se, but had the PDF on my iphone for quick reference.