Mac won't boot after Windows fail.

[w00t951]

I have a Mac OS X 10.6.4 installation on a Macbook Pro 5,1. I use two separate hard drives, one for Windows and the other for Mac. I accidentally switched from Windows to Mac with Windows in sleep mode. When I opened the computer, Windows resumed and BSoD'd. I panicked and forced the computer to shut down. It wouldn't boot into Windows, so I used my Snow Leopard install disk to attempt a repair. It didn't even finish. I tried a repair installation. It wouldn't install with the message "This disk cannot be modified." Disk Utility is telling me to back up and clean install. If there is a way to avoid this, what is it? And I don't have a backup; if there is no way of repairing my installation how do I back up my files? Thanks. All haste is appreciated.

 

[w00t951]

Update: I cannot create a disk image onto an external HDD. I get an input/output error message. I believe my last hope is to use terminal and create a massive dump of all my files onto an external HDD. How would you go about doing this?

 

[Gabriel GR]

I have a Mac OS X 10.6.4 installation on a Macbook Pro 5,1. I use two separate hard drives, one for Windows and the other for Mac. I accidentally switched from Windows to Mac with Windows in sleep mode. When I opened the computer, Windows resumed and BSoD'd. I panicked and forced the computer to shut down. It wouldn't boot into Windows, so I used my Snow Leopard install disk to attempt a repair. It didn't even finish. I tried a repair installation. It wouldn't install with the message "This disk cannot be modified." Disk Utility is telling me to back up and clean install. If there is a way to avoid this, what is it? And I don't have a backup; if there is no way of repairing my installation how do I back up my files? Thanks. All haste is appreciated.

Remove the disk with windows and it will probably boot the OSX HDD normally.

The disk utility can't repair the windows disk because it's formatted in a file system it cannot handle (NTFS) but it's still checking it during booting and finds errors. The fact that you switched to the mac shouldn't mess up windows that much. It's as if power dropped while your pc was sleeping.

 

[w00t951]

No, I removed the Windows disk and restarted with the Mac OS X disk. It got stuck at this weird cycle where it would display a small grey progress bar that would begin to fill, reset, begin to fill, then the computer would shut down. This is when I tried to boot from my OS X install disk. Sorry, should have made that more clear.

 

[w00t951]

Okay, I installed OS X onto an external HDD and booted from there. All my files were still intact, so I just copied them over to a different partition on the external HDD. OS X must put some kind of protection around your Home folder, because my System folder was completely empty.