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Horrible Problem

J

Jukafah

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 5, 2008
9
0
Hello everybody! I just got my new Penryn Macbook Pro today, and it is a really nice notebook indeed. I did manage to screw something up rather badly though. You see I wanted to install Vista on it, so I started up Boot Camp, partioned for 50 gigs.
I put the windows disk in and everything was going smoothly but then it came to the, "install windows on which partion?" and there was only one there! The one with my all my mac information on it so I decided to exit the set up. Well, now my mac thinks windows is installed and somehow my entire mac portion (140 gigs) is now completely gone.
I tried putting the reinstall disks in and everything goes smooth untill it asks me what volume I want to install on, at which point I'm sort of confused because there is no volume!
I tried the time capsule thing and it just keeps searching and never it says anything like "no results found."

So, what in the entire world, am i supposed to do? Thanks!
 
Windows can only see the Windows partition, it can't read the Mac partition, and Apple makes sure you can't screw it up. When restarting, hold down option it will then give you the option of which volume to boot from. Choose the one with the Happy Mac and you should be just fine.

TEG
 
Well I guess I forgot to add that part. When I do that only Windows comes up, even though it was never installed! I will try it again though.

Edit* It only comes up as one partion and it's Windows. No Mac.
 
Try this if you think you erased your drive: If you hold down the option key (what the other guy said) at bootup and you see your Mac partition, then you are fine. If you don't, well...

:eek:
 
No Mac partion. All I did was exit the windows set up because it didn't show that boot camp made a partion! grrr
 
Boot of the System Disc and run disc utility. If you can see the drive, it may only need to be repaired, if not, you may have accidently deleted the master boot record, if that is the case, you'll have to start from scratch.

TEG
 
Wow, I manage to break this MBP in a couple hours. That's funny. Anyway, I'm in the Disk Utility and it does see my 186.3 GB Fujitsu HD, but when I have it selected I cannot hit on of the buttons on the right side of it like, Veryify Disk Permissions, Repair Disk Permissions, Verify Disk, or Repair Disk. They're all whited out.
 
There can only be ONE Cave Man in here. :p

Anyway, don't worry about it. Put in the osx disk and boot from that. It should bring you to the partitioning screen. :D
 
Jukafah said:
Wow, I manage to break this MBP in a couple hours. That's funny.
Click to expand...

took me much less time than you - I started it up - went through the setup and managed to mistype my password twice, the same way, without noticing (it's all ***s on the screen). I figured it out 10 minutes later when I needed to type my password to install software updates, nothing I tried worked.

So I pulled out the install disk, thought about resetting the password for the account with it but that leaves the keychain all messed up and it was a new machine so .. I just started over with erase and install.
 
As I put in my first post, I've tried that. It doesn't even show an HD I can install it on. It's just blank, but it does show it in the Disk Docotor thing.
 
I don't really want to have to return it. I was hoping that someone would be able to help me. Even completely deleting and reinstalling. If someone could help me through that, that would be awesome.
 
Jukafah said:
I don't really want to have to return it. I was hoping that someone would be able to help me. Even completely deleting and reinstalling. If someone could help me through that, that would be awesome.
Click to expand...

If you boot from CD and the disk won't function properly in Disk utility, then you've got a larger problem then partitioning issues. Boot camp is an official part of Leopard now, so you are covered by support. Don't try to fly blind when you can just swap it out.
 
I suppose I'll give them a call, but if any of you can give me anything to go on, don't hesitate to post!
 
there's another way.

you can use the command line tool dd or ddrescue to copy the original drive byte by byte to another computer if you really need the data back. All you need is to be able to mount the drive.
 
"Erase" should be available as an option when you have the hdd selected in disk utility.

If you erase it and format the drive as HFS+ Journaled you should be able to reinstall OS X.
 
well i'm on the phone with apple right now. thanks for the input anyways guys!
 
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