Help on a screwed up partition

[Teplex]

Ok so I've successfully partioned off my MacBook Pro hd. I also installed Windows in the past, all smoothly. But I used disk utility to erase all that was on the partition rather than just erasing the partition with bootcamp. Now I can't partition anything off again, nor did I get back my 30 gigs from the partition. And when I try to install Windows again to try to put back the files so I can just delete the partition, the partition doesn't show up as bootcamp, but rather there is only one secition, the main hd, that shows up. So now I have 30 gigs somewhere that I can't use or even touch I think.
Any help would be appreciated the millionth degree.
Thanks!

 

[sickmacdoc]

In that situation there is one thing you can try, and another that will work for sure.

First off if you go into Disk Utility, select your drive on the left (not the partitions, but the whole drive) and click the "Partition" tab, it MAY let you click the former BC partition in the map and click "-" at the bottom. If it successfully removes that partition, you should be able to drag the bottom line of your main partition down to take up the whole drive, then apply that and exit Disk Utility and rerun the Boot Camp Assistant to try again. I would try that first as it would not erase the info currently on the OSX partition. I don't remember for sure, but suspect this will have to be done from the Disk Utility available when booted from an installer disk, and would certainly try it that way.

If that partition is so screwed up that DU will not remove it, the only sure fire way to resolve it is to go into Disk Utility and repartition/erase the drive as a single partition. This will however erase all the content of the OSX installation, after which you will need to reinstall OSX, hopefully from a backup you have. If you need to repartition the drive in this fashion, it will need to be done from the Disk Utility in the menus when you boot up from the installer disk.