Bootcamp windows 7 startup kills formatting of ext esata drive

I have Lion and Bootcamp installed on my MacPro 8-core (2007 version). I have an external SansDigital esata 5 bay tower connected via a HighPoint Rocket PCI portmultiplier card. The tower contains JBOD disk for Mac OS X backups includind a 2TB drive for TimeMachine.
A crazy thing happens when I boot to Windows7 using Bootcamp. After my Windows session, when I reboot my Mac to Lion, the Mac formatted drive in the 1st bay of my esata tower becomes unreadable. I get an error message when booting that the drive is unrecongnizable and do I want to format, ignore or eject. It happens 100% of the time.
Now I have to remember to have the esata tower turned off before using Bootcamp to keep the 1st bay drive from being killed. I used the same hardware with SnowLeopard and Bootcamp with no issues for a few years. My Lion upgrade was a clean install.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
Bud James

It might be that the fact Windows under BootCamp does not run in AHCI mode. It could be, the drive is not switching modes properly.
There is software on the net (AHCI Enabler) that patches the MBR for AHCI mode. The help file indicates, how to adjust the registry PRIOR to this operation. It also allows backup of the MBR, and restoration.
Chad Johnson is the principal author.

Similar Messages

I formatted my ext hard drive and changed it to mac os x extended(journaled). then i put in all my data back. after a while, i insert the hard drive but my macbook cannot read it. plz help

i formatted my ext hard drive and changed it to mac os x extended(journaled). then i put in all my data back. after a while, i insert the hard drive but my macbook cannot read it. plz help

SanandaDutta
tried on a different mac. The same problem exists.
If that is the case, its extremely unlikely you have a bad USB cable on the seagate, rather as I mentioned earlier a bad SATA bridge card.
If the Seagate 1TB USB external wont open on either Mac and youve verified same (try a diff. USB cable if you have one however this is nearly never the case),....then to get the data off that HD (unless it is dead which is also extremely unlikely),......then you would need to extract the HD from its case and insert same into either a HD dock or USB HD enclosure.
8 out of 10 seemingly dead inopperable 1-3+ year old external HD are perfectly fine, rather the cheap 50 cent SATA bridge card fries and dies (alas)
reply back if you need help in extracting same.

Bootcamp windows 7 listen to line in soundcard driver not installing

Hi there and thanks for reading.
Bottom line Bootcamped Windows 7
I just want to be able to HEAR my line in input in REALTIME not a 1-2sec delay like the "listen to device" thing in windows has by default.
I've tried to install realtek drivers however I get an error message.
I've attempted to install other drivers and those fail as well.
It's upsetting because litereally everything else works (minus the aircard for some reason but I dont mind using a cable) and the internal speakers.
If anyone has had the same problem and found a fix. please please do share.

I got to the same point as viggo. bootmgr was missing after restoring the partition with winclone.
i fixed the bootrecord of the cloned partition like this:
1) create a windows system repair disk. you can do this in your virtual machine. since you cannot boot from cd. you need to create the repair disk directly into an iso file. windows only lets you choose an existing cdrw drives, so you need to simulate a cd burner. use TotalMounter for this. its free and does exactly what you need.
the following steps have been done with parallels. don't know if this works with vm fusion
2) Create a new parallels vm and use the cloned, broken bootcamp partition as its main drive (if you start it right now, you get the same "bootmgr is missing" message)
3) mount the previously created system repair disc as a cd rom
4) boot from the cd room
5) run systemrepair to fix the bootrecord
6) windows is now booting in parallels and it hopefully does so directly from disk :-)

Satellite L670 - Windows 7 cannot format a USB flash drive

Hello
Can anybody help? I am trying too format a USB flash drive on my Toshiba Satellite L670 Windows 7 but it keeps saying windows cannot format.

Hi thanks for answer the flash drive is brand it showed ok when first installed but my laptop asked me too format and when i did thats when it gave problem tred on vista and xp machines

Bluescreen on windows startup with external usb 3.0 drive

Hi Community,
I recently bought an internal SATA III ssd and a SATA to usb 3.0 adapter, so i can use it as an external drive.
I want to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit on that drive, so I can boot from my iMac.
I used this step by step guide: http://bleeptobleep.blogspot.fr/2013/02/mac-install-windows-7-or-8-on-external.h tml
The steps to create the partitions and apply the installation image all worked very well, but when i plug in the usb drive and select the windows installation after holding [ALT] on startup, the windows logo animation starts and after 2 seconds a bluescreen appears and the iMac restarts using MacOSX .
My specs:
iMac 27inch, Late 2012
3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB
The windows 7 installation i want to deploy is 64bits and the PC i used for this is 64bits windows 7 too.
SSD is 250GB Samsung 840 series
Any idea how to fix this?
Thanks ,
user9to7

[UPDATE]:
I tried to boot it from a windows 7 64bit PC. It also crashed there in exactly the same way.
So i think you'll probably need more information about how I installed windows 7:
1) Create 2 partitions: FAT32(350MB, active) and NTFS(remaining disk space)
2) Apply Windows 7 install.wim to partition using x86 version of imagex.exe in WaikTools.
3) Install boot manager with bcdboot on FAT32 partition
4) Done.
But what did I do wrong?
Thanks ,
user9to7

Can I format an IDE Hard Drive from Mac Pro?

I use a mid - 2012 Mac Pro; run Mavericks OS X 10.9.2.
1. Can an IDE hard drive (using an external drive) be formatted to 10.9.2, from my Mac Pro using Mavericks? (the IDE hard drive is new/unformatted).
2. Once formatted to 10.9.2, can I reformat the IDE hard drive to Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8, from my Mac Pro using Mavericks?
3. If so, would should I do to accomplish Question # 2 above?

The version of the OS that is running is not relevant to formatting the drive. When you format a drive in any OS, you should select "Mac OS extended journaled." (That is, unless you plan to share the drive with a Windows computer.) Formatted this way, the drive can be used with any version of Mac OS.
You do not have to reformat the drive each time you connect it with a different OS.

I'm installing windows 7 64-bit on my imac which I've done before but I get a message that the partition is GPT even after I format the bootcamp partition. I just upgraded my hard drive to a 3tb and I'm allocating 1tb for windows. How can I fix this?

I'm installing windows 7 64-bit on my imac which I've done before but I get a message that the partition is GPT even after I format the bootcamp partition. I just upgraded my hard drive to a 3tb and I'm allocating 1tb for windows. How can I fix this?

No easy fix for a few reasons:
1) Bootcamp requires a hybrid MBR for the partition table. That is: both an MBR and a GPT partition table at the same time with the GPT one having all partitions and the MBR one having only the ones that are relevant, but at most 4 of them (including the protective partition and the Macintosh HD one). Which leads us to:
2) The MBR part of the hybrid partition table cannot work with 3TB hard drives. MBR is limited to 2TB.
I am working on a small EFI app that can boot Windows in EFI mode on a Mac and that would mean that you can go GPT only on your system. The progress of the app is slow due to the nature of EFI and for now requires that you do an unattended Windows install with slipstreamed graphics drivers, but we are adding VGA loading on top of EFI quite soon after the rest of the app stabilises. The status of the app is documented at:
Win7 x64 booting natively via EFI (no bios emulation)
Windows does actually successfully boot in EFI mode on most Macs (anything with a 64bit EFI should work), but does not have graphics support even if you load the driver due to the VGA pci registers not being set by the firmware. Furthermore, in Setup and Safe Mode, Windows uses VGA instead of GOP which is a failure by design since VGA is a BIOS standard and not really compatible without hacks with EFI. Other EFI implementations also add VGA compatibility at a high cost to the firmware complexity for the VGA cards available on the market that don't actually contain anything in their ROM except the VGA BIOS.
My recomendations:
1) Install on a second smaller hard-drive; or
2) Wait for the EFI app to come out officially and use that to boot Windows Vista SP1 x64 and Windows 7 x64 (RTM and SP1) in the native EFI mode.
3) Wait for Windows 8 which supports VGA-less booting acording to the AMD presentation at UEFI Plugfest.

I have just bought a macbook pro and i want to use an ext hard drive with it which i previously used on a windows computer, but when i plug it in it doesn't show up on my macbook pro, I've wiped it and just need to format it but don't know how, help

i have just bought a macbook pro and i want to use an ext hard drive with it which i previously used on a windows computer, but when i plug it in it doesn't show up on my macbook pro, I've wiped it and just need to format it but don't know how, any help would be much appreciated

Try the other USB port. If it still doesn't show up in Disk Utility then there may be something wrong with your Mac. Try something else in each USB port and see if it is seen. If the other thing, like a USB thumb drive, does show up in disk utiltiy then the USB ports are fine.
Power down the system and restart with the drive connected, go to DU and see it it is seen.

BootCamp Partition- Missing Operating System Windows Startup Repair

Hi.
I made the mistake of creating a new partition on my HD with an existing Boot Camp partition. I tried to follow the advice of Loner T in this thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6574886, and got made the Windows installation bootable. Upon starting up Windows the screen displayed 'Missing Operating System', I tried doing a Windows Startup Repair using the Windows Installation Media without any luck.
Here is the current state of my hard drive.
diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk0
   1:                  Apple_HFS                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            201.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:               Windows_NTFS                         20.0 GB    disk0s4
sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 31130/255/63 [500118192 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [     start -       size]
1: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [         1 -     409639] HFS+
2: AF   25 127 15 - 1023 254 63 [    409640 - 393139416] HFS+
*3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 393549056 -    1269536] Darwin Boot
4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 461056000 -   39061504] HPFS/QNX/AUX
sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=256060514304; sectorsize=512; blocks=500118192
gpt show: /dev/disk0: MBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: error: bogus map
gpt show: unable to open device '/dev/disk0': Undefined error: 0
sudo dd if=/dev/disk0s4 count=1 2>/dev/null | hexdump -C
00000000 80 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 |.. . . . . . . .|
00000010 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 | . . . . . . . .|
00000140 04 00 00 00 02 01 00 0c 00 00 78 2e 50 15 00 00 |..........x.P...|
00000150 00 00 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.. .............|
00000160 00 00 00 00 00 00 8a 00 78 2e 50 15 00 03 00 00 |........x.P.....|
00000170 01 00 03 00 35 35 09 00 00 00 3e 00 8c 09 00 00 |....55....>.....|
00000180 76 01 00 00 15 00 02 00 91 77 1c 00 00 00 02 01 |v........w......|
00000190 c9 b5 04 00 01 00 02 00 2c 00 00 00 8c 09 00 00 |........,.......|
000001a0 76 01 00 00 15 00 00 01 00 00 1e 00 00 00 00 01 |v...............|
000001b0 00 00 00 00 41 00 03 00 fb 03 00 00 0c 00 20 00 |....A......... .|
000001c0 10 00 f8 03 35 35 09 00 01 d2 46 00 00 c3 29 0b |....55....F...).|
000001d0 23 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 |#. . . . . . . .|
000001e0 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 | . . . . . . . .|
00000200

Please download GPT Fdisk (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/) and Testdisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step).
1. Your GPT is corrupt.
2. The MBR is incorrect.
3. You do not have a valid NTFS header.
You need to run Testdisk first to find the correct NTFS header. Please see http://imgur.com/a/PjmnK for the Testdisk screens.

[Guide] Install and run Windows 7/8 from an external drive without using bootcamp (works for late 2012 iMacs with 3TB drive)

This is a copy of a post from my blog, you can also Read it on my blog...
Introduction
After I received my new iMac with a 3 TB Fusion Drive, I was disappointed when I realized that Bootcamp was not running on this model and prevented me from installing Windows on it. I wanted to take advantage of the powerful iMac hardware to play games but I couldn't.
There are a few ways of working around this limitation, but I found most of them quite complex and most of the time they required formatting the internal hard drive or repartitioning it and go for a brand new installation of Mac OS X. I was not comfortable with that.
But there is another way, and that is to install Windows on an external hard drive, using either USB or Thunderbolt. Personally I used a Lacie Rugged 1 TB drive that has both USB3 and Thunderbolt connectors. Both work very well.
This guide may interest you if:
You have an internal hard drive of more than 2TB and you can't run bootcamp at all (like late 2012 iMacs with a 3TB drive)
You have limited space or you don't want to dedicate disk space on your internal hard disk drive to a Windows installation
What this guide will make you do:
It will make you erase all your data from your external USB3/Thunderbolt hard drive
It will make you install Windows on your external USB3/Thunderbolt hard drive
It will make you install bootcamp drivers
What this will not make you do:
It will not make you modify anything on your internal Mac hard drive
It will not make you use or install the bootcamp assistant
It will not activate the Preference Pane for the default boot drive. You have to boot by pressing the ALT key to manually select your boot drive each tome you want to boot Windows.
What you'll need
An external hard drive with a USB3 and/or Thunderbolt connector. This drive will be formatted so ensure you saved your files before going further. You can use either an SSD drive or a classic hard drive.
A Windows 7 or 8 install DVD or ISO (check whether to install 32 or 64 bits versions based on your Bootcamp drivers) and the corresponding Windows serial number.
One of the following:
Mac OS X with a Windows 7 or 8 Virtual Machine (use VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop for example. Note: VMWare Fusion seems to have some issues with Thunderbolt and USB3. Plug your drive to a USB2 enclosure or hub to work around this -it worked for me-, or use another VM software) → Read the important note below
A PC running Windows 7 or 8 → Read the important note below
Windows AIK (free) running on your Virtual Machine or on your PC, or just the imagex.exe file (the rest of the Windows AIK package is not needed)
Download imagex.exe
Download Windows AIK (this download and installation is not required if you have already downloaded imagex.exe)
Bootcamp drivers for your Mac. You can get these either by running bootcamp from your Mac (Applications > Utilities > Bootcamp) or, if like me you have a 3TB drive and can't run bootcamp at all, use the direct download links here.
A USB stick to store your bootcamp drivers
IMPORTANT: If your Mac has a 64 bits processor, your Windows Virtual Machine on OSX, your Windows installation on your PC and your Windows DVD/ISO must also be in 64 bits!
Step by Step guide
Step 1: Get the install.wim file
If you have a Windows ISO file:
Mount the ISO
If you're on OS X: double click on the ISO file
If you're on on Windows 7: Use a software like Virtual Clone Drive (free)
If you're on Windows 8: double click on the ISO file
Open the mounted drive, then go to the "sources" folder and locate the "install.wim" file. Save this file to C:\wim\ on your Windows installation or virtual machine.
If you have a Windows DVD: open the "sources" folder on the DVD and locate the "install.wim" file. Save this file to C:\wim\ on your Windows installation or virtual machine.
IMPORTANT: If instead of a "install.wim" file, you have "install.esd", you can not continue this step by step guide. And an ESD file can not be converted into a WIM file. So you must get a version of the Windows installation DVD/ISO that has an install.wim file.
Step 2: Clean, partition and format your external hard drive
On your Windows installation or virtual machine, plug in your external hard drive (can be plugged using USB2, USB3 or Thunderbolt at this stage)
Open the command prompt in administrator mode (cmd.exe). To run it in administrator mode, right click on cmd.exe > Run as admin.
Type the following and hit enter to open the disk partitioner utility:
diskpartType the following and hit enter to list your drives:
list disk
This will display a list of disks mounted on your computer or virtual machine. Make sure your drive is listed here before you continue.Identify the disk ID of your external hard drive. Replace # by your real external disk ID in the command below:
select disk #Clean all partitions by typing the following (warning: this will erase all data from your external drive!):
clean
Create the boot parition by typing the following followed by the enter key:
create partition primary size=350
This will create a 350MB partition on your external driveFormat the partition in FAT32 by typing the following:
format fs=fat32 quick
Set this partition to active by typing:
active
Assign a letter to mount this partition. We will use letter B in our example. If B is already used on your PC, replace B by any other available letter:
assign letter=b
Windows will detect a new drive and probably display a pop-up. Ignore that.Create the Windows installation partition using all the remaining space available on the external drive by typing the following:
create partition primary
Format the new partition in NTFS:
format fs=ntfs quick
Assign a letter to mount this partition. We will use letter O in our example. If O is already used on your PC, replace O by any other available letter:
assign letter=o
Windows will detect a new drive and probably display a pop-up. Ignore that.Exit the disk partitioner utility by typing:
exit
Step 3: Deploy the Windows installation image
Still using the command prompt in admin mode (you didn't close it, did you? ), locate the imagex.exe file mentioned in the "What you'll need" section and access its folder. In our example, we have put this file in C:\imagex\imagex.exe
Type the following and hit enter (remember to replace o: with the letter you have chosen in the previous step):
imagex.exe /apply C:\wim\install.wim 1 o:
This will take some time. The Windows installation image is being deployed to your external driveOnce done, type the following to create the boot section (remember to replace o: and b: with the letters you've chosen in the previous step):
o:\windows\system32\bcdboot o:\windows /f ALL /s b:
If you get an error message saying that you can't run this program on your PC, then most probably you are running on a 32 bits installation of windows and you're trying to deploy a 64 bits install. This means you did not read the important notes in the beginning of this guide
If you get an error message on the options that can be used with the BCDBOOT command, then it's because you're installing Windows 7, and the /f option is not supported. If that is the case, remove /f ALL from the command and retry.
Step 4: Boot from your external drive and install Windows
Plug in your external drive:
If you've done all the previous steps from a Windows PC, unplug your external drive from your PC and plug it to your Mac, either on a USB3 or a Thunderbolt port.
If you've done all the previous steps from your Mac using a Virtual Machine, ensure the external drive is plugged in to a USB3 or Thunderbolt port. Using USB2 should also work but you'll get very poor performance so I don't recommend doing that.
Reboot your Mac and once the bootup sound is over, immediately press the ALT (option) key and release it only when the boot drives selection screen appears. If you did not get the boot drives selection screen, reboot and try again. The timing to press the ALT (option) key is quite short. It must not be too early or too late.
On the boot selection screen, choose "Windows" using the arrow keys on your keyboard, then press enter.
The Windows installation starts. Follow the on-screen instructions as normal. The installation program will restart your computer one or 2 times. Don't forget to press ALT (option) right after the bootup sound, and boot on Windows again each time to continue the installation.
Step 5: Install bootcamp drivers
Once the Windows installation is complete, plug in the USB stick where you stored the bootcamp drivers (see "what you'll need" section), open it and right click on "setup.exe" and select "Run as admin". Follow the on-screen instructions.If you have an error saying that you can't run this program on this PC, obviously you have installed a 32 bits version of Windows and the bootcamp drivers for your Mac are made for a 64 bits version. You have to restart the whole guide and make sure to get a 64 bits version of Windows this time!
Once the bootcamp drivers are all installed, reboot and press ALT (option) after the bootup sound to boot on Windows again. And Voilà, you have Windows installed on your USB3/Thunderbolt drive running on your Mac.
Now each time you want to boot on Windows, press and hold the ALT (option) key after the startup sound and select "Windows", then press Enter.

Hi i'm trying to follow your guide, I installed windows 8 on bootcamp to do it planning to remove it after the operation is done, but i get stuck at part 3: every command i give to imagex i get a pop-up ftom windws asking how do I want to open this kind of file install.wim and imagex does nothing, what do i have to do to stop those pop-ups?

If I partitioned my drive from within a bootcamped windows volume will it destroy my GPT scheme and disable my booting ability into Mac OSx?

Alright I consider myself a fairly computer literate person but do excuse me if this issue is not actually all that interesting. Know that I would call apple care but what I am trying to do isn't exactly supported by them so they wouldn't help me. I am setting up my system to triple boot. I did the normal method as far as I can tell. I used bootcamp assistant to shrink my drive and installed windows through that. All went well. So then I had a apprx 400gb mac os volume and a 100gb windows volume. Following the advice from the mactel team over at the ubuntu help site I logged into windows via startup+option. When I did this all volumes popped up. recovery mac and windows. selected windows and then used the windows disk utility equivalent to shrink that partition in half. When I did this I check the disk manager and all was well. all volumes were there and healthy. When I restarted my computer in the boot manager window though only the recovery boot and the windows boot showed up. After doing a little research I figured that the error was negligible and that I could fix it easily enough later so I proceeded to then format the free space volume into an ntfs for the ubuntu setup. When I did that and restarted only the windows boot shows up in the boot menu. When I look through disk manager all of the partitions are where they should be and healthy. The only real clue I've found is that when inside of bootcamp control panel instead of the different volumes showing up as they are normally supposed to it gives me the option of startup from the windows volume the ntfs volume and a pseudo volume that doesnt physically exist that serves the purpose of windows recovery. This makes me think something went wrong with bootcamp. I would rEFIt it and try to see if theres some magic I could work in there but I can't install that program on windows. Additionally I found out that theres some talk that ssd can only handle two bootable partitions and that perhaps when I added a partition it shifted priority to volumes 2 and 3 instead of 1 and 2. I've tried all of the bootup tricks i know and some I looked up. the only one that still works is the boot manager window. The rest just do nothing and then go straight to windows which makes me thing if something happened with bootcamp that all the very low level osx to setup and then run windows on top of that- that now the operation isn't running as planned and windows is actually touching the hardware thus subverting any attempts to use low level osx tricks to get around it. Anyway those are the facts and my thoughts.
Having done more research than when I originally wrote ^^ I now realize that the entire reason for bootcamp (sans driver issues) is to deal with the difference between the use of GPT and MBR. I am now pretty sure that rewriting any part of the drive from software that uses MBR will mess up the partition scheme of the entire drive. Additionally I've seen a few things about ssd's being weird when they have too many partitions on them. And lastly I have an iso image of my computer right before I started tinkering so if anything I can factory reset and voila(I don't feel like pulling up a french keyboard).
picture from disk manager in windows

I actually managed to get the setup running and relatively stable. There were alot of random issues and quite honestly I was fixing my computer more often that I was using it so I backed out. If anyone wants to do this like I did I would say: It's not easy and definitely not for someone who doesn't know anything about the differences between operating systems and partitioning schemes. That being said I didn't know nearly enough and if you're careful its possible. The steps however aer pretty simple.
Before doing anything get a third party boot handle up and stable on your machine.
1. Create a partition for Windows
2. Create a partition for Linux
3. Bootcamp Windows. This step can be tricky with the extra partition because bootcamp tries to handle all of it for you so it may benefit some people to bootcamp first and then create a linux partition. But that comes with its own set of issues.
4. Run Linux setup from inside of osX NOT windows.
There are a hundred steps that could come between each of those and I neither have the expertise nor the balls to empower someone who needs to read a forum post how to do it. But it really wasn't more conceptually complicated than that.
Now on to the new issue. I was getting .NET framework incompatibilities and the whole reason I wanted the windows setup was to game so I deleted that partition. When I did that everything went back to normal EXCEPT somewhere somehow the windows boot manager is still buried and when I boot up it tries to boot into windows which obviously doesnt exist anymore. Any advise on how to get rid of this?
to make things clear I'm now running "single" partition.
@Allen Eckert

Rather Urgent: Mac HD cannot be repaired. Bootcamp windows effected?

This is rather urgent, as I need the computer for the Bar Examination on Tuesday (two days away!)
Today, my MacBook Air gave a "question mark" folder on booting. I tried booting from a disk, and using Disk Utility. The Disk Repair said it cannot repair the Mac HD, advising to backup, reformat, and re-install.
I also have Bootcamp Windows 7 installed. That is currently working fine. And that is what I need for the Bar Exam. If everything stays as is, I am okay.
So my question is: Will the damaged Mac HD ruin the undamaged Bootcamp Windows? And if so, what can I do to fix this?
There's special software called ExamSoft that is required to take the Bar. Unfortunately, you can only download it once, and you have to verify the laptop when you download, so this is not something I can download after reformatting. I can not reformat the harddrive until after the exam. (They advise keeping the software on for 9 months!) But I am okay with that, I can deal with all my other computer needs afterwards, but with just two days away from a three day exam, I am very worried about my Bootcamp Windows going down, taking the exam software with it.
Please advise!!

As you've already taken the bar exam, this reply comes too late to take care of that initial fear of losing everything.
I do have some steps that you can follow now that the stress has subsided:
1) Get yourself a copy of Alsoft Disk Warrior (the latest is 4.1.1) -- It's worth its weight in gold
2) Find your system CDs or 10.6 cd -- whichever is newest
3) Get an external drive that you can format for mac
Depending on whether you mind losing the data on the Mac side of your computer or not will determine the steps you would need to go through and how much work it will take to get back up and running.
*If you don't mind losing the data on the mac side of your system:*
1) Boot to your 10.6 cd or latest system disk
2) When it makes it to the installation screen choose English. Then from the Utilities menu at the top choose Disk Utility.
3) VERY IMPORTANT TO DO PROPERLY -- Choose the Macintosh HD partition (not bootcamp and NOT THE MAIN DRIVE).
4) Select Erase tab and make sure the format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled), name can be anything you want. Click the Erase button.
5) Quit Disk Utility and go through the 10.6 installation process as normal.
6) Once install has finished, you can restore your data if you have it on a time machine volume or on another Mac, otherwise just set the system up fresh and install your various Apps, etc.
7) Follow the steps below to make a backup/image of your Windows Boot Camp partition
*If you mind losing the data on the mac side, follow these steps:*
1) Boot to the Disk Warrior CD -- (If it doesn't boot to the cd due to the system being newer, you'll have to create a Bootable hard drive for the Mac - http://www.ehow.com/how5142897make-bootable-usb-mac.html. Once you have a bootable drive you can drag copy DiskWarrior to the bootable drive from off the CD after you've temporarily booted to the external drive -- hold Option key at startup and select the external hard drive to boot to it)
2) Attempt to repair the Mac HD partition using Disk Warrior, and if it's successful you can continue with these steps -- if it's not.. consider your mac data lost to standard recovery methods.
3) After it repairs, restart and boot to the 10.6 or latest System cd you have.
4) Under the Utilities menu, choose Disk Utility, and check your Mac HD for problems.. since Disk Warrior cleaned up the directory structure it probably won't have errors.
5) Walk through a standard install of 10.6
6) Perform all updates and BACK UP YOUR STUFF!
7) Follow the next steps below to make a backup/image of your Windows Boot Camp partition
*To back up your Windows Boot Camp Partition:*
1) Once your system works on the Mac side again, make sure you're booted into the Mac Side.
2) Download and install Winclone (drag to your applications folder) http://download.cnet.com/Winclone/3000-2242_4-172338.html
3) Run Winclone and select your bootcamp partition.
4) Plug in your external hard drive and make sure it's formatted for Mac, if it's not, use Disk Utility and choose the external drive, and choose to Erase the volume and format as Mac OS Extended. THIS WILL ERASE THE DATA ON THE DRIVE, there's no way to convert the drive to Mac Formatted from a PC format. It's not recommended to use a PC formatted disk for this, it's possible that it might work but it's not worth the risk if it doesn't.
5) Inside Winclone, click the Image.. button, give your Bootcamp image a name such as: Bootcamp 2-25-2011
6) Save the image onto the external drive.
To restore the image you can open Winclone, click Restore, select the disk image you saved, and then restore it to the BOOTCAMP partition. A restoration would be necessary if you were to wipe the whole drive, if you were to install a newer drive into your system, if you wanted to resize your bootcamp partition to be larger, or if you were to migrate your BOOTCAMP partition to another system.
Hope that helps you and others!
Message was edited by: wizdomonwheels

Help! bootcamped window pro 7 ok BUT driver / setup flash drive seemed to correctly install drivers, nvidia etc etc BUT on windows login screen i have no mouse or keyboard , have plugged in logitech usb mouse and keyboard still no good please help

Please can somebody help me with this.
i cannot get any mouse or keyboard input on my login screen after bootcamping windows 7 pro.
i used a correctly formatted drive for the driver downloads, they seemed to install but now i have no input method to login to wondows7.
all is fine in osx apple wireless mouse keyboard magicpad ok
windows cant login due to no input devices.
have connected logitech mouse keyboard still nothing.
please help!
thanks in advance

1. I have tried copying the Keyboard/Trackpad/Mouse drivers to the $WinPEDriver$ directory with mixed success on a 2012 MBP.
2. My experience is based on a 2013 rMBP. You may be able to use an Apple USB Keypad/Mouse to better success.
3. See http://www.macworld.com/article/2460820/macbook-pro-mid-2014-review-minor-update -offers-slightly-better-cpu-performance.html for HW differences between the two machines.
4. If you have access to a 2013 rMBP, I can suggest trying to build the USB on that and working with the USB to see if you can make it install Windows. the rMBP 2014 and rMBP 2013 have the same HW, except some CPU changes. You can also try building the USB at the nearest Apple store, if possible.
5. There is a section in AutoUnattend.xml, which is supposed to install all drivers in $WinPEDriver$ (see this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2686316 )
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsWinPE" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <DriverPaths>
                <PathAndCredentials wcm:keyValue="1" wcm:action="add">
                    <Path>$WinPEDriver$</Path>
                </PathAndCredentials>
            </DriverPaths>
        </component>

Ext hard drive no longer visible in Windows XP via Airport Extreme

Hey everyone,
I am running a Windows XP Pro machine in my network. I have a LaCie 500gb ext USB drive plugged into my Airport Extreme. It is formatted in Mac OS Extended. It has always shown up with my other drives on my PC under the "My Computer" window. Now it has disappeared out of nowhere. Nothing was installed/changed. I host files on that drive that I access from my Windows machine and I cannot for the life of me get it to show up again. I understrand that Windows doesn't read Mac OS Extended... If I plug the drive into my PC directly it does not show up. But for some reason it has always worked through the Airport until now... Was it just dumb luck until this point?
Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!

HDDs, formatted in Mac OS Extended, are shared out using the SMB/CIFS file sharing protocol to Windows or Linux-based network clients. As you know this format is not readable when connected directly to a Windows PC.
SMB/CIFS is the common sharing format used by Windows to access any network drive so that shouldn't be the issue. Have you tried mounting/mapping the drive on the PC? Please check out the following Apple Support article for details.

ISight on Bootcamp Windows 7 no longer working

After upgrading to Lion OS X, my iSight no longer works on Bootcamp Windows 7. It formerly worked under Snow Leopard's Bootcamp Win 7.

i would believe it might be the limiting of the number of programs during startup.
do a msconfig and configure it to startup only windows item only. See if this makes any diference
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Bootcamp windows 7 startup kills formatting of ext esata drive

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