No windows disk in the startup disk list

Hi there,
I installed Windows vista on my Macbook and it works great.
My problem is when I need to switch the OS, there are only Mac OS and Network startup in the startup disk list. The icon for windows is gone. It was there several days ago. Now what I can do is pressing down the option button and select windows every time.
I do some search in the forum and found someone talk about resetting the PRAM.
I followed the instruction but it does not help.
Could you please tell me what should I do?
Thanks a lot.

You may not have to remove it.
The Windows disk vanishing from the Startup Disk options is a known issue though.
Does this help?
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090526114511593
~Lyssa

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

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

nikasv wrote:
The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.
That's essentially what Solving Boot Camp partition creation problems says. What is your question?

Windows set as Default Startup Disk; How to Escape?

My kids have been using our IMac with Windows for several years now. No problems at all.
But today, they went into system prefs in OSX, and (!!!) selected the Windows partition as the startup disk!
So Windows XP is booted, regardless of our attempts to escape ... (option key, PRAMzap).
How can we get that Imac back on OSX ??
This is an early public beta version of Bootcamp (don't see any 'bootcamp control panel' or icon on bottom right screen).

Thanks for your suggestions - I've now tried those startup methods but (to my endless dismay) the IMac starts up Windows regardless.
It seems like the IMac disregards these startup shortcuts when a Windows partition is selected as startup disk?
To recap, WindowsXP boots even when holding down command-X, or CTL, or T, or Option, or PRAMzap, or Shift.
I'm holding the Option key (yes, wired keyboard) from before powerup and all during the boot.
Also I tried to boot from OSX disk (holding down C-key) but that likewise failed. It then took Windows a much longer to boot (as was also the case when I tried command-X).
Can I, while running Windows, install the bootcamp stuff needed so that I have access to the Mac-disk in the Windows control panels? If so, what should I install?

NetBoot images are not showing up in the Startup Disk window

I have created a few Netboot images, enabled them and placed them in the correct place.
They don't show up in the Startup Disk window.
I have noticed that bootparamd is not running, and that after a while also bootpd disappeared.
Strange, no?
(I started them back up and it didn't make a difference.)
Message was edited by: marc herman

It looks like the NFS exports has separate entries for both:
/Volumes/xxxxx
/Volumes/xxxxx/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0
and that's not allowed. You can't separately export a directory and one of its subdirectories on the same file system.
It sounds like maybe the Server Admin tools are confused. If you don't really need /Volumes/xxxxx exported, then I think just deleting that share should fix things up.
If you can't get the tools to straighten things out, you could override all the NFS exports with your own defined in /etc/exports. There's an exports(5) man page that describes the format and creating an /etc/exports file will override anything in NetInfo (10.4 and earlier).
If you want to export both directories, they just need to be listed in the same exports entry, like:
/Volumes/xxxxx /Volumes/xxxxx/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0
This causes the "/Volumes/xxxxx" file system to be exported and allows only the directories "/Volumes/xxxxx" and "/Volumes/xxxxx/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0" to be mounted.
HTH
--macko

Boot Camp error: The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition. The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Jounraled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.

Hi!
I am getting the error:
"The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition. The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Jounraled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows."
I read up some on google, but all of them says that they have crated a partition and that is the problem, I only have the standard "Macintosh HD".
I tried to create a partition manually in disk utility but then the error message: "Partition failed with error message: Could not unmount disk."
Can anyone help me? It's driving me crazy.
Thanks.

This message, and threads like yours got asked daily for over two years, now it is only a couple times a week!!
Is it so hard to follow through? you were to have backup already, clones are best, then erase/format and restore.
Then partition.
Some have been able to use Disk Utility booted from OS X DVD or another drive, and repair the drive.
You have to use Boot Camp Assistant (99.9% anyway) to create and achieve a proper Windows Master Boot Record partition.

I have Mac OS X, using boot camp i installed windows 7. installation was successful but when i try to select to boot back to mac os x via boot camp from Windows 7 control panel, its saying "You may not have privileges to change the startup disk..."

from the boot camp control panel, highlighted "Macintosh HD Mac OS X", click on Restart button or click OK or click Apply buttons gave me "An error occurred while trying to change the startup disk. You may not have privileges to change the startup disk. Make sure you have administrative privileges and try again."
Im logged in to Windows 7 as admin thou but still giving me the above message.
i rebooted & the option key does not give me option to boot to Mac instead gives me a screen with lock then below is a blank field then a right arrow on the right side, i normally hit the power button from this screen
please help
thx

sorry for digging up an old thread, but what was the problem?

I am getting the popup window that says my startup disk full even after deleting many files.

I am getting the popup window that says my startup disk is almost full. I have transfered most of my photos to an external HD, deleted most of my iTunes library, and emptied the trash. The problem is that with these steps, the diskspace did not increase at all-not even a megabyte. Any ideas why or how to fix it?

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the page that opens.
Drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:
df -Hl
Post any lines of output that appear below what you entered — the text, please, not a screenshot.

Why doesn't my backup drive appear in the Startup Disk selection window?

I've been using SuperDuper! to backup my Mac HD to my internal Seagate drive. The Seagate is divided into Seagate1 and Seagate2. I backup to Seagate1. When I open the Startup Disk window from Preferences, only the Mac HD icon appears, highlighted, and a Network Startup icon. Seagate1 does not appear, although I've made it bootable while using SuperDuper!
I'm not on a network, as I'm the sole user of my computer at home. I am connected to the Internet via cable, but that shouldn't be a factor, I think. I don't know why the Network icon is there but Seagate1 but Seagate1 isn't.
Is there a way to make it so the Seagate1 icon appears in the Startup Disk window? As it stands if my Mac HD goes down, I won't have access to Seagate1 to boot the computer.
Would much appreciate any advice or referral to another source that could help me.

Something I learned re: partitioning w/ Disk Utility: Dave Nanian at SD! referred me to SD!'s FAQs, the 1st one dealing with my problem:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5738
I told (email) him that the original partitions already showed APM, but I went ahead, anyway, following instr's in the FAQ. Notable in those instr's is to click on Options, which I may have overlooked originally. This time, when I clicked on Options, APM showed as the default in the window. I went ahead & proceeded, thinking, "Well, if APM is the default, why did I need to click on Options"?
So I raised the issue with Dave. Here's what he said: "Alas, no - it uses the existing scheme, which was likely MBR."
Lesson: When partitioning w/ DU, ALWAYS click on Options, even if APM is the default. I know DU directs this, but all I can think of why the original partitioning failed is that I did not do this. Any comments would be welcome.

I have a windows 7 dvd in the drive and the mac is set to launch from the dvd drive. How do I change the startup disk?

I have a windows 7 dvd in the drive and the mac is set to launch from the dvd drive. How do I change the startup disk?

Hold the option key at startup and when you get to the boot panel select your Mac OS drive.

Why is the Mac HD icon missing in the Startup Disk window?

The Mac HD icon is missing in the Startup Disk window in the Lion Partition on my iMac. It is also missing from the Snow Leopard partition. I did not install Lion on my MacBook and the Mac HD icon is in the Startup Disk.
       Startup Disk (in Snow Leopard and Lion)
MacOSX, 10.6.8,             Mac OSX, 10.7,        Network Startup     (no MacOSX icon)
on Snow Leopard 1            on LIon 2
Any ideas about this?

I am currently in the same situation, and have Paragon installed on my Mac. Furthermore the Option key does not work when I try to hold it down during startup.

My Firewire Clone is not showing up in the Startup Disk selection window

Going to the Startup Disk section Under System Preferences to locate my mounted Firewire/cloned HD - But it's not showing up there for start up selection.
The external firewire clone, running OS X 10.4.11 shows up in the finder right away. Also I have mounted and used it as the start up disk on several other computers just fine. The current computer I'm having issues mounting to is a: 2 ghz Intel MacBook with 1 gb ram running 10.4.11
The previous computers that I have had success mounting to were a G4 ibook and a G5 imac(OSX 10.4.11). - Don't know if the Intel part is why I can't mount?
Any ideas or fixes - Thanks!

What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338
Dealing with FireWire problems (drives not mounting, devices unrecognized, etc.)
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20041221081432908
 Cheers, Tom

Trying to get rid of error "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition". Recovery HD visible.

Hello,
I've been stuck for some hours now trying different things to install Windows 7 on my Macbook Air, and I think now is the time to call for some custom help.
I'm using OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks.
So some months ago I just wanted to run Linux on my laptop so I installed rEFInd, shrunk the Macintosh HD partition by 25GB and booted on a linux live USB flash I burned using dd.
Then I used gparted to create my linux partitions.
It worked just fine, even though disk utility from OS X seemed quite unhappy about this (it seemed to have incorrect informations about the filesystem on these partitions, seeing them as journaled Mac OS while they were clearly not). At this point already, the Recovery HD from mac showed up in disk utility, which I found weird but didn't bother me.
But recently I needed windows on my Mac. So after a few tries for the triple boot, I managed to create a bootable USB stick with boot camp, which already showed me the message "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition" and hence refused to partition/install himself.
So I thought "OK, that's no big issue, I can just partition with disk utility and then boot on the USB stick and everything will work fine". But when EFI booting on the USB flash drive I got stuck at the beginning of Windows installer with no keyboard or mouse support.
After some hours spent googling, I was unable to find a working fix for that, and as there was no support for my case (where I used bootcamp to create the bootable flash but NOT to partition/reboot) I decided to give bootcamp a try.
So I erased my linux partitions, and cleaned up everything I could on the HD with disk utility. That means I now have two partitions showing in disk utility : Macintosh HD and Recovery HD.
When using disk utility from terminal, the list is :
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            80.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk0s3
But boot camp still isn't happy, and the message "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition" keeps popping after the intro and I can't partition/boot from bootcamp.
So, as I don't understand what is wrong here anymore, any help would be greatly appreciated!
I will be watching the thread a lot because I really would like this resolved (or windows installed one way or another) this weekend; so any questions on my past manipulations or config just ask!
Thank you.

keyboard issues are also something of a common issue.
I wish the best threads were voted to the top of forums, something! Me, I literally burned out here, but after installing 10 Preview, wanted to "see what was going on" after hiatus of a couple years and see if anything had changed (no, not really!)
Also, these new Communities are not putting "more like this" and failing to help too.
I think rewriting Boot Camp Assistant's built in help and pdf would help a lot, and needs to be clearer and go into details. And Yosemite was not it seems tested against Boot Camp, and drivers for new Macs + new OS also lag behind. Again, common and no sign of improvement or change.
One of the tricks to the "can't partition" is rather simple - of course backup is step #1 and is spelled out - SHRINK the main HFS+ partition! then stretch it back to full length. Sometimes a reboot is needed, and sometimes even do a Safe Boot - not sure what but Recovry Mode might be a good option too. That does seem to consolidate free space, move files that are locked and cannot be moved otherwise, and allow BCA to partition, jusst be sure to have enough space left and large enough for a proper Windows install (and fudge factor).

I'm getting this error with bootcamp "The startup disk does not have enough space to be partitioned"

Here's the story...
I had a dual boot configuration on my mac with Mac OS X Lion and Windows XP (made with bootcamp).
I decided to reinstall windows.
I deleted the windows partition using BootCamp.
Tried to recreate the Windows partition with Boot Camp and got: "The startup disk does not have enough space to be partitioned You must have at least 10 GB of free space available"
After reading several posts on this forum I decided to defrag the hard drive and try again.
The defrag did not work and I'm still getting the error, I have 22 gb of free space on my drive.
Any suggestions?
Also, I tried repair disk and repair permissions
Hmm, my external harddrive says on the box "OS X 10.5.8 or higher (32-bit kernel only)" Could the 32-bit requirement be an issue? Is lion 64-bit?

Boot Camp must be able to allocate a contiguous block of space on the drive. If it cannot find 10 GBs of contiguous space, then you cannot create the Windows partition.
You will have to backup your OS X partition to an external drive, boot from the external drive, use Disk Utility to repartition and reformat your hard drive back to a single volume, then restore your backup to the internal hard drive.
Get an empty external hard drive and clone your internal drive to the external one.
Boot from the external hard drive.
Erase the internal hard drive.
Restore the external clone to the internal hard drive.
Clone the internal drive to the external drive
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon for the external drive and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After startup do the following:
Erase internal hard drive
Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
After DU loads select your internal hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Do not quit Disk Utility.
Restore the clone to the internal hard drive
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the internal hard drive. Source means the external startup drive.
Note that the Source and Destination drives are swapped for this last procedure.

The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition

Am trying to install Windows 7 using Boot Camp. Am receieving the following message in Boot Camp "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition"
In Disk Utilty, I get the following message after clicking Verify Disk and Repair Disk buttons
Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting
Error: Parition map check failed becuse no slices were found
Any solution for above message?

You will need to repartition your drive:
You will have to backup your OS X partition to an external drive, boot from the external drive, use Disk Utility to repartition and reformat your hard drive back to a single volume, then restore your backup to the internal hard drive.
Get an empty external hard drive and clone your internal drive to the external one.
Boot from the external hard drive.
Erase the internal hard drive.
Restore the external clone to the internal hard drive.
Clone the internal drive to the external drive
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon for the external drive and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
After startup do the following:
Erase internal hard drive
Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
After DU loads select your internal hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Do not quit Disk Utility.
Restore the clone to the internal hard drive
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the internal hard drive. Source means the external startup drive.
Note that the Source and Destination drives are swapped for this last procedure.

Bootcamp Yosemite 10.10.1 "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition."

I'm trying to install Windows on my Mac via Bootcamp. I start up Boot Camp Assistant, the introduction pops up, I press continue and then I get this error message.
"The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.
The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows."
So I head over to Disk Utility, the only partitions I have are Macintosh HD and EFI. I thought there might be some hidden partition, so I went into debug mode in Disk Util and there's nothing (Also used terminal, I'll put results below*). So that brings me to my current problem; it's already "formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume" and I can't make it "partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows." because this error message prevents me from doing that. Maybe there's an easy fix, but the information provided is so unhelpful/circular it makes me want to laugh and punch something at the same time. I saw that someone fixed this problem by merging their partitions, but as I already have the minimum number of partitions so that wouldn't fix anything (unless EFI is unnecessary, which I'm fairly sure it isn't).
-Running 10.10.1 OSX Yosemite
-Trying to install Windows 8.1
diskutil list
sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0
sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            3.0 TB     disk0s2
Thanks for your help in advance ;3, I hope this is an easy fix

I had a similar issue after doing a fresh install of Yosemite. Bootcamp assistant seems to want a Core Storage scenario before it will continue.
To convert your drive use the following command in Terminal:
diskutil cs convert disk0s2
Bootcamp will then let you proceed as normal. Be warned though!
After the windows install completes you may end up with something like my situation:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/27472857?ac_cid=op123456#27472857

No windows disk in the startup disk list

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