Can I reinstall Windows in Boot Camp without unpartitioning my hard drive?

Hi!
I've had my iMac with Boot Camp for a while, and I'm the kind of person that likes to download lots of junk. On my Mac partition, I downloaded Parallels, and used it with my windows partition. Later that day, I found out that using Parallels with a Boot Camp partition can corrupt files, which is what happened. My Windows partition still works, but it's a little screwy.
So, I was wondering if I can reinstall Windows XP without unpartitioning my hard drive, and without effecting Mac OS X.
Thanks~

Yes. It is quite straightforward - you boot into OS X, insert your Windows install disk, go to Applications (or is it Utilities?) open BootCamp - the Assistant opens. Then you ignore the partition options and just click on install Windows. BootCamp should be used for all things Windows.. ....I myself originally made the mistake of re-installing Windows one time while IN Windows (I didn't even think). I made a mess!
Edit
My machine came with Tiger. I was sooooo impressed when I purchased Leopard that I could choose to do an erase/install of OS X without even touching the Windows side. Really nice - I still have that original Windows install untouched!
Message was edited by: NA Smith

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Boot camp without deleting external hard drive

Hi,
the external hard drive im using has 2 partitions. One for Time machine backups and one which I would like to use for Windows/Bootcamp.
Is there a way to only delete/format the Windows partition without having to delete the partition used for back ups during boot camp?
thanks

Loner T wrote:
Windows on an external drive is officially supported, but you can use this How to run Boot Camp on External Hard Drive? A TM drive is onto typically used for non-TM purposes either, so please be…
Auto-correct. .
It is NOT supported. Windows-to-Go, Winclone or the link I provided are the options that you have.

I guess I didn't explaine that I have a healthy operating Windows 8 Boot camp partition on my hard drive. When I upgraded to Mavericks I am no long able to access the bootcamp partition from the disk icon in system preferences; the Windows 8 works fine.

On both Mini Mac and iMac 27" I am no longer able to utalize the Startup Disk icon in System Preferences; the Windows 8 on Bootcamp partition works fine if I close the Mavericks OX and select the Windows partition at bootup from the hard drive. My question is why don't the icon in System Prederences work anymore since I upgraded to Mavericks. Also, Users & Groups, Printers & Scanners icons no longer work either.

On both Mini Mac and iMac 27" I am no longer able to utalize the Startup Disk icon in System Preferences; the Windows 8 on Bootcamp partition works fine if I close the Mavericks OX and select the Windows partition at bootup from the hard drive. My question is why don't the icon in System Prederences work anymore since I upgraded to Mavericks. Also, Users & Groups, Printers & Scanners icons no longer work either.

I made a mistake. i installed windows using boot camp without os x lion dvd. what should i do? help pls

i made a mistake. i installed windows using boot camp without os x lion dvd. what should i do? help pls
Re: can i install windows for pc on my mac or do i need the windows for mac?

There is no Lion DVD. Start Boot Camp Assistant and select the menu item to download the Windows Support Software.
Read and follow the Boot Camp Installation Guide. http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/boot_camp_install-setup_10.7.pdf

How can I get Windows 7 Boot Camp to find my Magic Mouse?

Hey!
So I just bought a Magic Mouse and it works flawlessly in OS X.
But when I use Windows 7 Boot Camp I can't find the mouse to add it as a new device. My bluetooth works just fine and I have the Boot Camp 3.3 drivers.
I tried rebooting, turning the mouse off and on, read a bunch of guides on the internet but no one is having issues CONNECTING the mouse, only getting it to work, so my research is proving to be hard.
Can you guys help me?
Thanks!

Hi Maia,
Can you please mention your MAC model (MBA 2011, MBP, iMac?). Which OS X version?. Have you problems pairing other bluetooth devices?
You may want to try the following setps.
1.- First make sure that you have the latest EFI and software updates. Including latest bootcamp bluetooth drivers.
2.- Unpair MM in Mac OSX
3.- Do a Nvram and SMC reset:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
4.- Restart
5.- Pair your MM under Mac OSX
6.- Boot on Bootcamp assiging bootcamp as a starting partition
7.- Add your device.
Let me know if that worked, there are another tricks you can try but I need additional information.

Can't Install Windows in Boot Camp - Windows Driver Issue

Before update to Mavericks, I had an installation of WIndows 7 running in Bootcamp. I had updated this to Windows 8.
Just prior to Mavericks release, the hard drive in my MacBook Pro started to fail. I had a full backup of the OS X partitiion, but did not have one of Windows.
After the drive was replaced, I did a fresh install of Mavericks and I'm planning on doing new installs of my apps over the coming days. (It's an opportunity to clear-out remains of old apps/OS's.) I have hit a wall with Boot Camp, though:
I used the Boot Camp Assistant to download the driver sets ("Windows support software") to a USB stick and partition the HD. However, although the Mac then boots off the Windows 8 (64-bit) installer DVD I can only get as far as choosing the installation language before I get stuck on the next step where it's looking for missing drivers. At first, I thought this was some reference to the ones downloaded from Apple, but I am now pretty certain that these just get installed after [in] Windows to allow access to the Apple hardware.
I have tried installing Windows 7 and get hung-up at the same point (which did not happen on 10.8).
Does anyone have any insight into what's happening and how I can get around the problem please?

Just chiming in - having the same issue as Bernard and Ian here myself, but with Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. Trying to install on MBP Late 2013, Mavericks, using USB. I get through the bootcamp phase to the language selection in Windows and then get the drivers error message.
Called apple tech support and they indicated that OEMs can sometimes be lightweight versions of the DVD installers (i.e. they leave out certain drivers because they assume a certain set of hardware components will be present, typically hardware that perhaps only PCs have and Macs don't) - so they suggested trying to get my hands on a retail version of the ISO file that might have all of the drivers necessary. I tried downloading every feasible iteration of the windows trial ISOs here but every one of them gave me the same error message in Windows setup. My next step is to call microsoft to ask them for a "complete" ISO - I'm hoping they can cooperate since I do have a valid, un-used authentication code for my Windows product. I'll let you know if this works.
In the meantime - has anyone found an easier fix?

Boot Camp 3 Nightmare - External Hard Drive

Ok, so I install Snow Leopard and updated Boot Camp to version 3.
Half the drivers failed to install for some reason.. I restarted and was greeted by a message: 'Windows is missng hal.dll please re-install'
I didn't mind much I just wiped Windows and reinstalled the whole thing, I only use it for games anyway. Here is where the REAL problems started.
Apple claims you can now read HFS from Windows using Boot Camp. Great, it reads my Mac partition on my internal hard drive, but NOT my HFS external hard drive that has all my games/applications on it. Fine, so I install Mac Drive 7 (which is what I previously used) and even THAT won't recognize it. The hard drive is displayed in 'safely remove devices' but not in 'my computer'. What is going on? I need this drive desperately and it works perfectly on OS X.
I can't find anyone with this kind of problem, I don't want to boot from my external hd, I just want to READ it, not even write to it! Thanks for reading,
Dan

Update:
Using Mac Drive 8 causes an even worse situation. It now mounts my external hard drive, and I can open it and see the first set of folders. At the same time windows does its stupid 'autoplay' search. After I see this first set of folders explorer crashes. I try to force end process and restart it but it doesn't even force close down the process properly.
The situation just gets worse and worse so I in the end I had to force restart my computer. What is going on!!!

Boot Camp / XP made my hard drive disappear

Running on a 20" Intel iMac w/ 10.4.6 and the latest updates. Also installed the latest firmware upgrade prior to this exercise.
Ran Boot Camp and created the Mac Driver CD and a 10G partition.
Then, booted from my XP disk and when it took me to the 'choose partition' screen, there was only one drive listed, as C:, of 130G. Shouldn't this have been the 10G partition? And shouldn't the OS X partition have shown up as it does in the documentation for Boot Camp? BTW, my drive is the 250G and had about 155G remaining before I started.
When I saw that, I dared not select and format, so I quit the XP installation.
Now, it only wants to boot into XP. Holding the Option key upon bootup only displays one disk to choose from, Windows. And of course, there's no XP for it to boot into, so it's just a flashing cursor on a black screen.
When I use the OS X Install Disk's Disk Utility, it does not even see my original OS X HD. All that shows up is the Maxtor drive with no installed disk information at all (no sub-drive or partitions under Maxtor).
Selecting Startup Drive doesn't do it either since my HD does not show up - only the CD drive and the Network choices.
And even if I wanted to reinstall OS X, I can't because there's no Destination drive to choose from in the installer!!!
How do I remove XP from the boot partition (is there even a boot partition on these things)? I'm sure the data on the disk was not deleted as I never let the XP installer actually do anything to the existing drives and Boot Camp is not supposed to actually delete any data.
Needless to say, any help would be appreciated.
20" iMac (Intel Core Duo) Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Its funny....I got my new INTEL IMAC set it up with all my old IMACs information 3 hours or so of work (Itunes...Iphoto)
and in 12 minutes....it had no bootable harddrive...and no volume information for disk utility to work with.
I saw your post...and that partition size (130 GB) was exactly the same as mine (I had created a 60gig windows Partition).
Did you ever figure out what happened.....I had not backed anything up....because I had never had this issue with a piece of Apple Software Before...and since I did not even hit F3 to create the windows partition...I thought I would be safe.
So it must have been the original Partition change in Boot Camp that destroyed OS X?
I bought Parallels product in the meantime...but it does not have very good graphics support, and it looks like it will not run certain CDROM games...due to copy protection (Keeps looking for the CDROM that is already in the drive).
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Repairing Boot Camp on a secondary hard drive

Hi, I managed to install Windows on a partition of a secondary hard drive with Winclone, but I am unable to boot on it.
Now when i choose windows as startup device i get the "No bootable device --- insert boot disk and press any key" error.
I played a lot with eFit, rEFind, gptsync and friends, but I did not manage to fix it yet.
I found a similar thread, but I did not find anything about fixing the MBR for two drives.
(https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4144252?start=600&tstart=0)
Here is the last code I tried; I chicken'd out at the end…
Last login: Sat May 11 09:02:53 on console
Jolin-M:~ JolinM$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.6
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/disk0: 125045424 sectors, 59.6 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 5AB6E84E-2E88-4DE1-9931-03182B67EABE
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 125045390
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 13 sectors (6.5 KiB)
Number Start (sector)    End (sector) Size       Code Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00 EFI System Partition
   2          409640       123775847   58.8 GiB    AF00 SSD
   3       123775848       125045383   619.9 MiB   AB00 Recovery HD
Command (? for help): q
Jolin-M:~ JolinM$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk1
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.6
Partition table scan:
MBR: hybrid
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/disk1: 488397168 sectors, 232.9 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 0E0A8E5C-5CA7-4C12-AAA9-C454E9E6ABF1
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 488397134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 1271309 sectors (620.8 MiB)
Number Start (sector)    End (sector) Size       Code Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00 EFI System Partition
   2          409640       438299463   208.8 GiB   AF00 Untitled
   3       439570432       488396799   23.3 GiB    0700 BOOTCAMP
Command (? for help): w
Warning! Mismatched GPT and MBR partition! MBR partition 4, of type 0x07,
has no corresponding GPT partition! You may continue, but this condition
might cause data loss in the future!
Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): n
Aborting write of new partition table.
Command (? for help): q

On reboots, disk0 and disk1 designations can flip around, so it's not reliable to specify them as disk0 and disk1. However, given the information you've given, disk0 (os x) and disk1 (windows), you should only have a protective MBR on disk0, and either a hybrid MBR with partitions 2 3 added for disk1, OR you can just remove the GPT and have an MBR only disk. There's no advantage to using GPT for a disk that's smaller than 2TB, without OS X on it. Way safer to go with MBR only.
Anyway, you haven't presented the fdisk result for either disk to show the MBR. You've only supplied the GPT information. So you need to do:
fdisk /dev/disk0
fdisk /dev/disk1

Can't see Windows 7 Boot Camp partition from Mac

I've had a Win7 boot partition on my 2011 MBP for a while and it boots just fine. I have a Mac boot partition, a Mac data partition, and a NTFS Win 7 partition. But the Boot Camp partition is greyed out and invisible when booted in to the Mac.
When in Windows, I can see and use the Mac partition from Win7 with MacDrive. The problem is that I cannot see the Windows partition from the Mac. I have Paragon NTFS for Mac installed as well as MacFuse. I tried to see the partition with CampTune and got this error:
I also tried going to the BootCamp Assistant and saw this:
Yet when booted in Windows, I see the Mac partition just fine.
Here is the disk info from terminal:
Uptime: 11:57 up 3 days, 12:28, 2 users, load averages: 0.56 0.56 0.64
~ > sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0
Password:
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=750156374016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1465149168
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1465149167
       start        size index contents
           0           1         MBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640   469926800      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   470336440      262144
   470598584   699733064      3 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1170331648      262144
1170593792   294553600      4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
1465147392        1743
1465149135          32         Sec GPT table
1465149167           1         Sec GPT header
~ > sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0          geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
2: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [    409640 - 469926800] HFS+
3: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 470598584 - 699733064] HFS+
*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1170593792 - 294553600] HPFS/QNX/AUX
~ >
Does anyone know if I can repair this without having to re-format? I have a 13" White MacBook as well and this setup works just fine. I did it such a long time ago that I forgot how I did the first one.
There is another thread on here that similar but not quite like my problem because I ca actually boo into Windows.
If anyone can help it would certainly be appreciated!
Thanks,
Randy

go to --------http://www.cnet.com/news/boot-camp-partitions-not-working-after-installing-os-x- lion/#postComments
just disable your ntfs software --- no need to uninstall

I can't Install windows via Boot Camp Assistant please Help!

My superdrive damaged so i use external dvd-rw. Boot camp assistant shows only two options and it recognise my ext dvd-rw then i partition for boot camp partition but after the partition that restarts automatically then blank screen displayed infinitely give me solution.

Also, If you have a Mac which is a UEFI model, and not in the list as shown by the BC Info.plist file, then a direct UEFI install of Windows 8 (not Windows 7) is possible and works very well.

I want to install windows7 on my 27in iMAC. I have an OEM version of Win7 which is win pro 7, 64 bit english. I will use boot camp to partion the hard drive for a win7 install. Can I use this version for the installation ??

My iMAC is a 2011 3.4 GHz intel i7 based with a 27in display. A year ago, I bought a Microsoft win pro 7 64-bit english OEM OS to install over a newly assembled AMD PC. I never installed it. Now, I want to put it on my iMAC using either Apple Bootcamp or Parallels. The win 7 OEM package has a lot of verbage about using an OEM preinstallation kit (OPK) and that it must be preinstalled on the hard drive. Is it OK to install this win7 version following the Bootcamp instructions.?
K6JPJ

Please post in the Boot Camp (not Bootcamp) forum I'm sure someone there can answer your quesiton if no one here is able to.

Boot camp on an external hard drive

Is it possible to use bootcamp and run windows on an external hardrive rather than the built in one with out sacrificing speed. Im looking to get a hard drive for all my windows stuff and I was hoping to be able to run windows straight from it but I understand that alot of them dont run fast enough to support running an operating system. Any suggestions as to a hard drive to look at getting. I'd be looking at something about 100 gigs. The most important thing would be running Vista or xp. Any suggestions? Thanks - Peter

I belive there might be a way, I just haven't gotten around to trying this out.
1) use disk utility to partition the external drive to ntfs (i think)
2) attach this disk to a pc and install the OS
3) install refit onto your mac
4) attach the drive via fw800, or even better yet esata, to you mac.
5) Start up your mac
6) choose the win xp option from the boot menu
7) install bootcamp drivers
this seems, in theory, that it should work. but this would probably be an easier solution:
1) use disk utility to partition the external drive to ntfs (i think)
2) install XP onto your internal drive via boot camp.
3) create a disk image of XP
4) drop the files from the image onto your external drive
5) install refit onto your mac
6) attach the drive via fw800, or even better yet esata, to you mac.
7) Start up your mac
8) choose the win xp option from the boot menu for the external drive
9) once you have determined that this works, you can delete the xp partition from your internal drive and you will have all the space of your external drive for XP
I would def think about getting an esata drive and the express card for this solution though.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEAQ7320GB16/
http://refit.sourceforge.net/

Is it possible to use Boot Camp on a second hard drive?

I would like to buy a new drive to install which will be used entirely for boot camp. Is it possible to use a second installed drive for Boot Camp?

Yup, right now I'm running Windows Vista on a second hard drive I installed right when I got my new system.

Can't install Windows with Boot Camp. Cannot Verify/Repair HD drive, fails.

Here's what it says when I click on Verify Disk:
Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”
Reading permissions database.
Reading the permissions database can take several minutes.
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/DVD.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/FRSettings.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/FRSources.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/Movies.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/Music.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/Photos.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/Podcasts.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app/Contents/PlugIns/TV.frappliance/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework/Versions/A/CodeResources", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are lrw-rw-r-- .
Permissions differ on "Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Frameworks/iPodUpdater.framework/Versions/A/C odeResources", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are lrw-rw-r-- .
Permissions differ on "Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/iTunesHelper.app/Contents/CodeResou rces", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are lrw-rw-r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DeviceLink.framework/Versions/A/CodeResources ", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Permissions differ on "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iTunesAccess.framework/Versions/A/CodeResourc es", should be -rw-r--r-- , they are lrw-r--r-- .
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources /DiskManagementTool" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/sbin/pppd" has been modified and will not be repaired.
Warning: SUID file "usr/sbin/vpnd" has been modified and will not be repaired.
ACL found but not expected on "Applications/Utilities".
ACL found but not expected on "Applications".
ACL found but not expected on "Library".
Permissions repair complete
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Performing live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume file count
(It should be 618142 instead of 618143)
Invalid volume directory count
(It should be 160288 instead of 160287)
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.

"...so I don't think he has the discs still."
Have him call AppleCare and get a new set. If his system goes south that's the only way he can do repairs, check his hardware or reinstall a new OS. Those disks are gold. (not really gold, just a metaphor).

Can I reinstall Windows in Boot Camp without unpartitioning my hard drive?

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