XP Service Pack 1 + Bootcamp = Question Mark on screen

[Son of Matrix]

hey guys,

Ok my ex gf called me at 3 am and cried because she can't boot her macbook anymore after installing her Windows XP SP 1 via bootcamp. All she had is question mark on her screen.

I have some screenshots from her and I am not sure whether her photos in her Mac OSX has been wiped out. I asked her to press F3 to quit the blue screen and take out her disgusting windows xp service pack 1 disk.

She managed to go to utilities after putting macosx boot disk inside and gave me some screenshots of her disk drive. I think her data is still intact but we can't repair or anything. Please see screenshots.

1) Anyone know how to fix this the easy way? She's in UK and I'm in Australia and I hope I don't need for her to go thru all the ubuntu and etc etc... It's too hard even for me!

2) Are her photos/data still in the hard disk somewhere? Her full hard disk space is 250GB.

Some links that I have discovered tha might help her but they are just too daunting...

http://forums.macnn.com/104/alternative-operating-systems/405438/boot-camp-erased-my-osx-partition/

http://phail.net/2008/04/13/bootcampsp1-white-screen-of-death-a-solution/

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1440

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/wi...cant-boot-mac-after-installing-boot-camp.html
Quote from link above: "OK I just did this and its very quick and easy to fix. First of all, get the XP disc out. Keep pressing eject or hold the mouse button from boot up.

Then put in the Apple disc you got with the machine and hold down C for a while until the apple logo and the little wheel thing appears. Then wait for the recovery to start, Select your language. The do nothing until the bar at the top appears. Go to Utilies then start up disc. Select the Mac OS X 10.4.8 or whatever version you are on. You will be prompted to reboot. and then it back to normal. I hope that is clear and helps and it works for me, it takes less than 5 minutes. "

ps: I have tried getting her to press the alt button but it's not helping her. I haven't get her to try pressing the C button after restarting her macbook but I think it's not going to work either...

But please help if you know the answers to the 2 questions above. THANKS A LOTTT!!!

 

[ayeying]

Disk utility says theres no other partitions except for the one for Windows available. In fact, the OSX partition isn't even there anymore. The data might be there but you'll need something to recover/rebuild it. I'll let someone else pitch in on that part (since I never had to rebuild any deleted data before). Do note, there's no guarantee that this would work though.

 

[balamw]

Can she get a screenshot of the partition tab from the second screen shot? It does look like the NTFS partition is only half of the HDD, so there may be hope.

No backup?

B

 

[xlii]

Doesn't Apple's own bootcamp manual say you need a minimum of windows xp service pack 2?

 

[Ivan P]

Doesn't Apple's own bootcamp manual say you need a minimum of windows xp service pack 2?

This.

I've accidentally encountered this myself before, and that's why. It's an unsupported version of Windows.

 

[balamw]

SP1 is bad news, but I think the priority now should be trying to figure out if the OS X data is still there and can be rescued.

After that we can talk about slipstreaming SP2 on to the SP1 install CD so it can work.

B

 

[akswun]

bust out some more kleenex!

I would say bye bye to the data...

'should've' backed up your data before trying something like this
'would've' read the apple manual before trying something like this(ie. xp sp1 not supported)
'could've' went to the macforums a little earlier.....


sorry....
or you can always bring it into the genius bar?!!!!!

 

[Rodus]

Get her to find a friend with a Mac, boot her machine in target disk mode (hold down 'T' when booting), connect firewire cable between the two, copy data across, reinstall OS X from scratch.

 

[ayeying]

Get her to find a friend with a Mac, boot her machine in target disk mode (hold down 'T' when booting), connect firewire cable between the two, copy data across, reinstall OS X from scratch.

If the partitions dont show up for OSX, that wouldn't work

 

[balamw]

If the partitions dont show up for OSX, that wouldn't work

The bit I don't get it why the Windows partition only seems to be half the drive, if it's the first half I think she's toast, if it's the second half it may be that some gparted-jitsu might get her data back.

B

 

[Son of Matrix]

Can she get a screenshot of the partition tab from the second screen shot? It does look like the NTFS partition is only half of the HDD, so there may be hope.

No backup?

B

hey guys, thanks. Here are the additional screenshots.

1) Partition tab
2) Screenshot after putting in the mac cd and holding down C button. I think she then get the next welcome page. I am not sure whether she can do all the below after the screenshot: "Select your language. The do nothing until the bar at the top appears. Go to Utilies then start up disc. Select the Mac OS X 10.4.8 or whatever version you are on. You will be prompted to reboot. and then it back to normal. " I will try to get her to do this tomorrow. Sorry, I didn't get the chance to guide her thru this and ask her more in detail as her sis then wants to use the PC that she is using to communicate with me and it's late over there.

3) Welcome page from CD. Is it good news and it's asking her to install additional applications. I haven't ask her to try "To quit, choose Quit Installer from the Installer menu and click Startup Disk.

No backup? I am not legally required to answer this question!

 

[balamw]

Looks like the GPT partition table is toast, but somehow the "fake" MBR that Windows uses is OK.

There should be a way to restore the right partition table, but I really don't know how.

EDIT: Maybe: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk.

If it were mine (and I had no backup) I would buy an external HDD larger then the internal and use dd to create a bitwise image of the current drive in order to be able to get back to this point if what I try doesn't work.

B

 

[JediMeister]

Found some applicable Apple support documents: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1978 and
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2176

 

[mslide]

Ok my ex gf called me...

You're a nicer guy than me. If one of my ex's called me up about that, I'd probably say something like "Now you know why you should backup your stuff... especially when you decide to install another OS along side your existing one. good luck *click*"

Seriously though, if it were really valuable data, I'd replace the drive with another one (good excuse to upgrade to a larger drive) so I could at least reinstall OSX and use the computer again. I would then get another external drive and, as suggested above, use 'dd' to duplicate it. I would then start playing around with data recovery programs and whatnot. Yes, this could be an expensive way to get the data back but how valuable is the data?

 

[Son of Matrix]

You're a nicer guy than me. If one of my ex's called me up about that, I'd probably say something like "Now you know why you should backup your stuff... especially when you decide to install another OS along side your existing one. good luck *click*"

Seriously though, if it were really valuable data, I'd replace the drive with another one (good excuse to upgrade to a larger drive) so I could at least reinstall OSX and use the computer again. I would then get another external drive and, as suggested above, use 'dd' to duplicate it. I would then start playing around with data recovery programs and whatnot. Yes, this could be an expensive way to get the data back but how valuable is the data?

what's "dd"?

what goes around comes around..

 

[balamw]

what's "dd"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)

A very handy and powerful unix utility for dealing with data at a low level.

Working with mslide's idea, I'd remove the damaged drive for safe keeping and install OS X on the new large drive. connect up the old drive via a USB to SATA adapter and create a dd image of it. Then, I'd try to find the magic string for an HFS+ partition and use a hex editor to find that in the dd image and remove anything before that again with dd. Then you should be able to mount that with disk utility and retrieve her files...

B