I messed up boot camp...

yesterday I used boot camp to add windows vista and it was working fine, until today when I added an external hard drive, but when I saw a picture of a hard drive on my desktop with about 32GB of storage it didn't dawn on me that it was the partitioned windows part of my internal hard drive, so I thought it was the new hard drive with only 10% showing so I formatted the partitioned part of the internal hard drive for windows, and now windows isn't up anymore and boot camp won't do anything... How do I fix it?
Thanks - Andrew

Bad news - sorry to hear about this error, it is a permanent one too.
Formatting anything removes all reference points so the space appears "clean". You data is still there, but it takes skills and money and lots of time to "see" the data again.
To destroy data it takes hours using a data shredder, while formatting only takes a minute. You should get used to the idea that you need to install Windows again from scratch (using Boot Camp). If, however, you need the data that was there, then you need to Google and search these Boards to find out how to do that. In fact I recall there is a software one can buy which recovers lost data - don't have a clue what it was called though.
Good luck.

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If I hold down option, obviously I get boot drive options and can choose Mac HD.
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Try this:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

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I found this blog post shortly after the first BootCamp beta was out. I successfully split mine into three partitions per the instructions. However, since Leopard now lets you live partition your disk, you can probably do the partitioning via Disk Utility instead of using diskutil in Terminal.
<http://twoyearstwodays.blogspot.com/2006/05/bootcamp-sharing-data-between-osx-a nd.html>

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I am posting this again as my post is way down another discussion.
I did the update yeterday without knowing about the bug. Now Windows XP won't start up in boot camp. This is really annoying. Mac OS X boots fine.
So. Can I downgrade from 10.4.11 to 10.4.6 without having to reinstall all the other applications? What about Boot Camp? Is this an option I select from the utilities available on the install disk?
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What if I do upgrade to 10.5 - will that update the system without having to reinstall Win XP etc?
FYI - Other articles concerning this issue are: http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/11/27.7.shtml
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/27/0040206
http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2007/11/bewareboot_camp_plus_mac_os1.php
http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/11/26/tiger.update.data.loss/
As you can see - I've been looking around a lot!
Message was edited by: Rob_Droitwich

Messed up boot camp and needs to eject windows xp disc

Hi all
After partitioning hard drive for xp and then entering installation, xp refuses to install BUT will not let me eject xp disk. Thus, evertime i turn mac on it trys to install xp, fails and has to be shut down making it impossible for me to get back into mac osx. Does anyone know of a way i can bypass the installation or eject the disk before it tries to install windows? If not i'll have to contact support, but just wondering if there's a quick fix first. Pressing eject on keyboard hasn't worked btw.
Thanks a lot, Dan

Hi
To eject the disk try restarting & holding down left mouse button.
Steve

How do I restore Windows 7 in Boot Camp after the Lion Update?

I was hoping my Lion update would be as smooth as other users' - unfortunately, it has messed up Boot Camp. The partition is now "Lion Recovery HD". I would like to know:
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how to go about recovering my original partition (I did a backup of the partition prior to the Lion Update)
if my Windows 7 is an upgrade disk, will I need to install Vista first?
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this is what i see:
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                                *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                                             209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 400GB       390.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD                    650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data                                    108.9 GB   disk0s4

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Hey guys, I just finished successfully installing Windows 8.1 on my Mac with Lion. There were no issues there, but I royally screwed up the Windows partition after trying to install the Boot Camp support software from a USB flash drive. I didn't look into it enough and am now realizing (after the fact of course) that I needed Boot Camp 5.1 for support for Windows 8.1!
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Right - this would be the easiest thing to do. Will I have issues the Windows license being activated again? I have actually never had to reinstall before so I have never had license issues.

I messed up while installing Boot Camp and now I can't restore my drive to a single partition.

Hey all, I have a late 2013 iMac on 10.9.4. Just got it a few days ago and tried to install my copy of 8.1 on it.
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Was about to give up to I rebooted into OSX to restore my drive, but was met with this error:
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Boot camp 2.1 with unibody Mac Book Pro is a mess

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After reinstalling Mac OS X, this time the apple driver disk produced 3 distinct errors, but the final dialog said the drivers did install successfully(progress?).
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2) Error dialog - MSIEXEC.EXE, with an error message to send to Microsoft. The driver disk continued...
3) Error dialog - Application executable file error, needs to close, with an error message to send to Microsoft. The driver disk continued...
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Thanks
bob

I saw exactly the same issues (Error 2869 and 2755) when attempting to install drivers from the OSX install disk after installing Windows XP Professional SP2.
I ran sfc /scannow and chkdisk. chkdisk identified many date problems. I corrected the date and time on my 15" MacBook Pro unibody, and re-ran chkdisk until there were no errors.
Mac drivers then installed with no issues.

I messed up in boot camp.

Okay, admittedly this one is probably my fault, but I was trying to fix boot camp, which was loading slowly, and now it doesn't work at all. So I try to delete that partition and start over again, but it comes up with a message of "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition" and "The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.
When I go to Disk Utilities I can see my Macintosh HD split into two sections, "Macintosh HD" and "Untitled". I know that Untitled was at one point my Windows partition because it has 50 GB of space, as I set it as, but I can't enable journaling as it is greyed out.
How would I go about fixing this problem and restoring my Macbook Pro to it's original single partition?

Well, that was embarrasingly easy. Thanks!

Boot Camp and QT updates messed up my monitor settings -- help!

The oddest thing happened after I allowed the updates of Boot Camp and Quicktime while running WinXP. My second monitor, which is an old 15" Apple Studio Display, went really dark, and I can't find a brightness control to fix it in WinXP. I now have to reset the brightness of the Apple monitor every time I boot natively in MacOSX as well.
Any ideas why this happened? Or how to fix it? The brightness control in WinXP is useless (it's an NVidia control panel) becase all it does is manage the relative brightness of the pixels; it does nothing to the actual brightness of the backlight. I read that there's supposed to be a brightness control tab in the Boot Camp control panel, but there isn't one.
This is a puzzling and frustrating dilemma. I hope someone out there can help. Aaaargh.
<Edited by Moderator>

I have the same problem with controling the brightness of my external monitor ( Apple Cinema display) while running Windows
XP on my MacBook Pro. Did you already find a solution?
Best regards. Robert

Help! Boot Camp has messed up my partition table!

I used Boot Camp to create a 60GB partition on my hard drive for a Windows installation; however, Boot Camp crashed and hung part way through. I left it for an hour but ultimately had to kill it forcibly.
Now I'm left with 60GB missing from my hard drive, but no partition to delete to reclaim the lost space.
Running diskutil on /dev/disk0 reports the following:
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *465.8 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 404.9 Gi disk0s2
I've tried booting from the installation disc and running a repair via Disk Utility. This appeared to find some errors but, after repairing them, my hard disk is still 60GB down.
Short of reinstalling OS X, is there anything else I can do to remove this partially-created partition and claim back my disc space?
Message was edited by: m0thr4

Fixed it by backing everything up in Time Machine, booting off the installation DVD, erasing my main HDD (which brought its capacity back to 465GB) and then performing a restore from the last full backup.

Cannot install windows 8.1 on imac 5k - apple support says "Correct, that machine can't install windows" Boot camp fail

I have a brand new imac 5k, with 4ghz i7, 295x GPU, 3.1TB fusion drive. Bought the machine so I could dual boot - I need windows for VR Dev work.
I've spent the last week and a half on tech support calls with Apple Senior Tech agents, and Microsoft agents as well, and today have been told that indeed this machine cannot run windows 8.1. Apparently Apple engineering knows about the issue, but says the problem is microsoft's. Ugh.
The latest iteration of the issue comes when installing 8.1 onto an external thunderbolt SSD (without even using boot camp) - I go through the EFI installer, convert the drive to GPT, format it as ntfs, but when I select the partition to install onto, the installer says it can't find the partition it just created. Smuh?
I've also tried the install through boot camp. This installation actually worked twice, but the install was unstable. After booting back into osX, then returning to Windows, the windows install went corrupt and couldn't be repaired. Subsequent attempts to install windows yielded a flurry of different errors, including "windows doesn't support GPT in this mode" or "the disk is locked, please unlock the disk" or "MBR must be converted to GPT" (where once I converted to GPT, the drive could no longer be found, despite the operation completing successfully.)
At any rate, it's a huge mess. I'd happily return the machine for a different config, but the company I bought it from will only swap it for a similar model -- so I've spent a pile on a machine that does not function as advertised; apple says "too bad, talk to Microsoft." Microsoft says "too bad, we've never seen this, this is an apple issue."
Has anyone out there gotten windows up and running on an iMac5k with fusion drive? If so, did you have to go through a crazy maze to make it work?
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
MC

Michael Conelly wrote:
After much gnashing of teeth, and a half dozen support calls, I'd all but given up. I finally seem to have solved this though - sort of - by installing windows 8.1 on boot camp on an older iMac, then cloning the bootcamp disk to an external thunderbolt drive via Winclone. That worked seamlessly, sticking to winclone's instructions, and I can boot via EFI to Windows 8.1 on the new iMac. So far so good.
I usually install W8.1 via EFI by using DU and a Free Space partition. The 3TB Fusion is first split into the underlying SSD/HDD physicals. OSX and Windows OSes are installed on SSD via EFI (no BCA). The OSX part and half the HDD are then used to create a new CS volume. The other HDD half becomes NTFS for non-Windows OS files. The Hybrid MBR method is completely unsatisfactory with the 3TB Fusion drive.
How is the TB/Winclone image for performance of the OS (since pagefile.sys is also on the TB)?

Can my MacBook Pro use boot camp with Windows 7 with BitLocker encryption?

I'm at wit's end with this, and I'm hoping I can get some advice here. I've read so many forum, posts and reviews that I'm not entirely sure what I can trust.
I have an early 2011 MacBook Pro (MacBookPro8,3). I need to run Windows encrypted for work purposes. It needs to be real windows with full-disk encryption (FDE). The business tools run in boot camp, but not in Parallels, because Parallels doesn't support DirectX 11. I would also benefit greatly from an SSD.
I do not want to do anything hacky like removing the Mac reocovery partition, because I've read that just loading Disk Utility in OS X might mess up your patrition boot tables as it tries to "fix" things. I don't want to have to manually reocover to fix stuff or chance losing data.
I have read (and tried) installing BitLocker on Windows 7 Ultimate under boot camp, but ran into the partition limit on my internal HDD. A maximum of 4 partitions are allowed, and between OS X, its recovery, boot camp, and the Windows partition, all 4 are used.
I have considered one of the following, which may work:
Install OWC's Data Doubler Kit with an additional 240GB SSD (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DDMBS6E240/). I would replace the internal SuperDrive with the HDD, and install the new SSD on the faster SATA 6G port. Windows would be installed on the SSD and OS X would stay on the HDD.
Replace the internal HDD with a new SSD (keeping the SuperDrive). I would lose OS X altogether and just have Windows installed.
Forget the entire thing and just buy a PC for work.
My thoughts are that with option both options #1 and #2, I don't even know if these setups will allow BitLocker. In both cases, Windows will be the only partition on the drive, so I'm assuming that when BitLocker is installed, there will be room for the new partition it creates. With option #1, I'm pretty sure I'd still be using Boot Camp, but how would that would for option #2? Is boot camp used even though there is no Mac partition? Would I still need to keey the Mac Recovery partition for this to work? I'd probably need to use Boot Camp drivers under Windows, I think.
I'd certainly be interested in using a self-encrypting drive (SED), especially a SSD, but I'm concerned that most of them appear to require TPM or BIOS functions that Mac's EFI does not provide. Such a drive would allow me to drop BitLocker, but I would need to be use the self-encryption actually works on this setup. From what I've read, most of the SED drives will work just fine under EFI, but you won't be able to set or access the encryption password, which pretty much makes these drives unencrypted.
I've read that BitLocker can be configured to use a flash drive as a decryption key, but I haven't been able to test that yet. I'm tried creating bootable flash drives under Windows and OS X, and none of them seem to appear when I access the boot menu (hold option during boot chime). I don't even know if this system supports bootable USB flash drives, or whether they can be used as a BitLocker key under boot camp.
For the record, I have attempted to use an external thunderbolt drive as my Windows partition, but Windows doesn't want to be installed on removable media, and even if it worked, I believe you can only boot OS X from thunderbolt. I do have a second OS X install booting from the thunderbolt drive, so I know that works. Also, FileVault 2 is installed on my OS X partition, and I read something about FV2 using the Recovery partition somehow so you can't remove the recovery partition to make room for BitLocker.
So ... does anyone have any suggestions preferably based on personal experience as to whether options #1 or #2 should work for my needs?
At this point, I'm really thinking I should just bite the bullet and purchase a PC that I will forever look down upon.

Are you using a MacBook Pro? Is everything installed on the same drive?
I would love to know how that install was performed. When I install Windows under boot camp, my MacBook Pro drive ends up with 4 partitions: Mac, Mac Recovery, Windows, and a small partition that I believe is used by boot camp.
Installing BitLocker on Windows requires the creation of a new small partition that Windows will boot off. The small partition is unencrypted, while the primary Windows partition will get encrypted. The following post discusses the maximum partition issue: https://discussions.apple.com/message/22753791#22753791
Has anyone installed Windows through boot camp on it's own drive, and if so, can BitLocker be installed on that without reaching any partition limit? I'm assuming that's possible, but would like to know before I spend hundreds on new hardware.

MacBook Pro 15" (Late 2013) will not install Windows 8.1 Pro under Boot Camp?

Have spent many hours trying to sort this out. I was told this morning in the end by a 'Senior Advisor' @ Apple that Boot Camp does not support Windows 8.1 Pro so effectively it seems like my only option for a new machine purchased earlier in the week is to return for a refund.
This despite the Apple Spec saying "
Windows 8: Windows 8 or 8.1, Windows 8 or 8.1 Pro (Boot Camp 5 only)"
The subject has been aired in thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5474320?start=585&tstart=0 but it has been suggested I post a fresh thread.
I have purchased a new 8.1 Pro license, so this is not an upgrade. I have followed the Boot Camp instructions, including getting the update for this model spcifically, but the nearest I got to a successful install returns soemthing of the like 'Unable to update boot settings' or the like and installation cancels. My machine is a mess I guess now, but in a final effort - does anyone have the step by step 'idiots guide' to working through the setup successfully? I don't want to get involved in massses of messing around with files as this should clearly not be necessary for achieving an advertised solution on a new machine bought within the last week should it?
Appreciate any help - I have up to seven more days left in my option to return for a full refund..... and maybe buy a Dell instead?
PS : We have many Apple products, Air, ipads and iphones so would dearly like to sort this out if possible.
Thanks for any help...

8/8.1 will install fine but there's some stuff you need to do before starting to ensure no issues
purchase a retail 8/8.1 license
use only a USB2 flash drive
get a clean 8 or 8.1 ISO
newer machines are more selective with the ISO for some reason (ISOs that worked to install Windows on many different older Macs would not work)
if you've made lots of changes, hacks and adjustments trying to get this work on your own, you should clean install OSX first, do not restore from time machine and start at step 3 to get Windows installed, you can go back later and copy files back to OSX
if you want to try without clean installing OSX, here goes
open boot camp assistant (bca) and choose option 3 ONLY if it reads 'remove/delete' Windows
open disk utility (du) and confirm that your HD now only has 1 single partition ('macintosh HD' unless you've renamed it)
restart machine and do a PRAM reset
open du and repair permissions TWICE
open bca and choose all 3 options (create, download, install)
from here, the process follows the standard boot camp instructions (http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1636/en_US/boot_camp_install-setup_ 10.8.pdf) but pay attention to step 3 where you do have to manually reformat the boot camp partition
clean ISOs
http://getintopc.com/softwares/operating-systems/download-windows-8-pro/
http://getintopc.com/softwares/operating-systems/windows-8-1-download/
if you are trying to clean install 8.1, google clean install 8.1 with windows 8 key for steps like this
http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/735517-how-install-windows-8 -1-clean-your-windows-8-upgrade-key.html

I messed up boot camp...

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