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Removing bootcamp

H

Haqq

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 5, 2008
65
0
Toronto
This is the deal,

I installed bootcamp so I have 2 drives on my desktop.

Then I reformatted my MACBOOK, and I lost boot camp but I still have the second drive on my desktop.

How do I remove the boot camp partition without having boot camp installed?

Thanks.

PS> I'm new to MAC so be easy with the lingo haha.
 
Well to make it simple, that would indicate that the Boot Camp partition has survived (somehow or another) on your hard disk- perhaps when you reformatted only the OSX partition was done, but I won't go into all that! ;)

Try running the Boot Camp Assistant (in your Utilities folder) again- if the Boot Camp partition has survived, the entry screen will give you an option to restore your hard drive to a single partition- after which the second drive icon will disappear. If that does not do it, then we will have to go a bit deeper but will wait on that for now!
 
I may be wrong, but for some reason I don't remember 10.4.X coming with Boot Camp, you had to download it from Apple. Once you have the OS installed, try going to Apple's website and downloading Boot Camp.

I believe 10.5.X comes with Boot Camp right on the disk, though.
 
Haqq said:
I'm currently running 10.4.11

I dont see the boot camp assistant :(
Click to expand...

Whoops- that what I get for making assumptions as I did when I assumed you were running Leopard. Sorry.

The Boot Camp Assistant Beta (for Tiger) is now no longer officially available from Apple since the only one supported now is Boot Camp 2.0/2.1 which is on the Leopard installer disk, but you can still find copies out there by doing a quick Google search for "boot camp beta download". The beta has expired, but you can still use it by resetting your system data temporarily to a date prior to January 1, 2008, then using the beta, then resetting your date to current. All pretty straightforward actually. Takes longer to type that than to do it!;)

On the other hand if you would prefer to reformat your disk again in a fashion that would truly clear the disk, let us know how you did it the first time and somebody will let you know a way that will work better for you.
 
Okay I tried the BOOTCAMP Beta way and this is what I got...

"The startup disk must be formatted as a ingle Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for Installing Windows.

Then it just has a button to QUIT.
 
Okay I tried the BOOTCAMP Beta way and this is what I got...

"The startup disk must be formatted as a ingle Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for Installing Windows.

Then it just has a button to QUIT.
 
Ok, so that answers the original question- the Boot Camp partition did not survive your earlier attempt to reformat the drive, at least not in a normal format.

So now we need to format the drive back to a single partition successfully to rid your disk of the second partition that is showing up on your desktop- this is the part that I meant when I mentioned earlier when I said we might have to go deeper.

Let's start off with this- you mentioned that you had formatted the drive- but what method did you use to format it? Knowing that could keep us from sending you down the same road again so let us know that first.

Also, since you have previously formatted the drive, I assume that you have no data on it you wish to keep (or at least the data you might have is backed up)- is that correct also?
 
Well I bought the MB off my Brother, and he had some personal stuff he wanted a clean install.

He had Leopard installed, but I couldnt use his CD to install Leapord on it I guess thats not allowed? So I was forced to install Tiger. But I remember before I did a clean install I partitioned my HD for a 2nd 5GB drive with boot camp. When I did the clean install I did a fresh install on my main HD and just left the 2nd HD the 5GB as is...

I didnt use the disk utility I just restarted the computer and booted the Tiger DVD, then I did the erase the drive.

So now I remain with this problem.
 
OK then if you go into Disk Utility, select the disk on the left and then click the Partition tab does it show two (or more) partitions as I suspect? If so, you need to start up from the installer disk again, then use the Disk Utility provided on it in the menus at the initial installation screen to change it back to one partition before installing the OS again.

What probably happened last time is since the disk had a valid OSX partition, the installer reformatted that partition only and installed onto it which it will do if asked to install on a partitioned disk. So change the partitions to one before installation and then go at it and when done you should be ready for Boot Camp again if desired- but at least the other icon will be gone too.

As to why you could not install Leopard on it using his disks, that is a mystery in itself....:confused: Was the Leopard disk you were trying from a retail (black/purple with an X) or was it one of his System Restore disks (grey) that came with his computer? Either should have worked fine (again assuming the System Restore was the set that came with that particular computer, not a System Restore disk from another variety of Mac).

What did it do/not do when you tried to install from the Leopard disk??
 
Just to add again to what (the ever helpful!) sickmacdoc said;

The only reasons I can think of that It wouldn't let you install leopard are;

1) you were using the wrong disks (as noted above)
2) You were trying to install an earlier version of leopard (probably 10.5.0) on top of a later version (probably 10.5.5)

either way, if you boot from the disk, you should be able to access disk utility and then format (erase) the entire Hard drive and any partitions (bootcamp or otherwise) that are on it.

If hold 'c' after you hear the 'bong' at boot up, you should be able to start from the dvd.

The DVD that came with your brothers mac should install ok on your macbook. Which version of osx was it? tiger or leopard?
 
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