Messed with Partitions, now I can't run boot camp Windows, only through Parallels

[LTman86]

I have a Macbook Pro mid 2010 version and my hard drive is normally split into 3 partitions. The main partition for Mac apps and software, second partition for music, pictures, videos and such, and the third partition is my Windows OS. I was trying to get it so that I could have a partition that I could access on both the Windows and Mac side when booted. So I created a fourth partition in the MDOS(FAT) format cut from the first (original) partition. It did give me a pop up that said something about how it would mess with the booting up or something, I didn't really pay attention at the time. Well, it didn't really work because the partition didn't show up when I ran Windows in Parallels, so I deleted the partition. But when I tried to run Windows through Boot Camp, aka. restart comp and boot as windows, it only displayed the Mac boot. When I tried to force it to boot through Windows using the Startup Disk in the System Preferences, it went to a blank black page, then in typical windows format, stated it couldn't find the drives needed to boot or something.

Anyways, I think I have to reinstall the Boot Camp software for Windows but I'm not sure how to do that. I've tried opening Boot Camp Assistant but it seems to be running under the assumption I haven't got a Window's partition so it's complaining I don't have my HDD as a single partition.

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[Makosuke]

This isn't a whole lot of help to you, but I can tell you from experience that Boot Camp Windows partitions are quite sensitive to the way the drive was partitioned. I assume this is due to the way Boot Camp does BIOS emulation and/or Boot Camp tricks the Windows boot loader into thinking that its partition is "normal", but regardless, if you don't create the partition through Boot Camp it won't work--I discovered this the hard way when I pre-partitioned some drives at work and discovered that Windows wouldn't install on them.

I'm assuming that when you repartitioned the drive on the fly like that you confused Boot Camp in one way or another.

The only guaranteed way I can suggest getting things running again is to remove the Boot Camp partition and use the app to re-create it (that's what I ended up having to do with my screw-up), but that'll of course wipe out your Windows install. You could use a Windows cloning tool to create an image of it and re-clone to the Boot Camp partition, but that'd be rather time consuming and might run into the same issues if the cloning app messes with the partitions at all.