Strange Extra Partition at Bootcamp Boot Screen

Hello All,
I have run into an interesting issue on my MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion, Bootcamp, and Windows 7. My MacBook Pro has been modified with and SSD drive and the DVD Drive has been removed. I have Mountain Lion installed on my SSD drive which is the startup disk, and I have Windows 7 installed on a partition on the standard HD.
I had to reinstall Windows 7 on my computer, so I actually replaced the optical drive. My MacBook Pro would not allow me to isntall windows 7 with a USB drive even after making the edits to the Bootcamp Application. After I reintsalled Windows, replaced the SSD, and removed the optical drive everything is working fine! However when I hold the option key to choose which partition I actually see 4 partitions! For some reason there is an extra windows partition with nothing on it.
1. SSD with 10.8.2
2. Windows - When I select this drive it boots to a black screen that says "Missing Operating System"
3. Windows 7 - Boots 100% correctly
4. Recovery HD 10.8.2
I have checked the Disk Utility and can't find an extra Partition listed anywhere! Does anyone know how I might remove this dummy partition. It isn't really causing any problems but I don't like it, it aslo doesn't seem to be taking up any storage space.
Thanks in advance!

wen installing windows, windows automaticlly makes a partition around 100mb in size for a backup. if u dont want it download easuas partition manager and just delete it

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I'm using Bootcamp (ver. 3.x) on a new mac mini with Snow Leopard & Windows 7. I have all software updates applied and all necessary drivers installed in Windows.
I am using the Logitech USB keyboard that I've been using with my PC. Is that the problem? The ALT key on a PC keyboard should map to the ALT/Option key for the mac (to the best of my knowledge).
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One last thing: I did see that another person on the forum had this problem, but in their case it seemed that their ALT key was working at first then at some point stopped. The advice was to do a PRAM-reset which they did and it fixed the problem. I actually tried that as well and that didn't solve my problem.
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Christopher Murphy can you help me? You look like expert of this area.
Are these help for the solution?
Merts-MacBook-Pro-2:~ Mert$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0
Password:
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167
       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 1243298208      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1243707848     1269536      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1244977384     5422872
1250400256   703123456      4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
1953523712        1423
1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
1953525167           1         Sec GPT header
Merts-MacBook-Pro-2:~ Mert$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 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 - 1243298208] HFS+
3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1243707848 -    1269536] Darwin Boot
4: 0C 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1250400256 - 703123456] Win95 FAT32L

You can not create another partition on a drive containing a Boot Camp partition. You now need to erase then format your drive. Reinstall OSX then reuse Boot Camp Assistant to create a new Boot Camp partition. Reinstall Windows. Ensure you copy off all your data before erasing and formatting the drive.

Windows partition not availible on boot screen

Windows has installed and works great, except I can only access it if it's the default on start up. When I press option, the only option I see is the default mac partition.
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I have the exact same problem. I just bought a new Macbook (with the "Santa Rosa" processor) and installed Windows XP. Everything in both Mac & Windows OS work fine except when I boot up the computer and hold down the OPTION key, I only see the Mac OS partition but not the Windows partition. I've made sure to install (and even re-installed) the Apple drivers in Windows from my Macbook installation disk.
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Message was edited by: macrick1

New Hard Drive, Mac partition cloned and boots fine, but I can't seem to get my BOOTCAMP (windows) partition to boot! Any ideas?

Hello all!
I got a new hard drive for my Mac Book Pro and an enclosure so I could clone the old partitions on to the new drive.
So I...
Put the new hard drive in the enclosure.
Booted up off an install disk and ran disk utility.
Copied the Mac and Bootcamp partitions over to the new drive that was connected VIA USB.
Turned off the computer, took the old hard drive out and put it in the enclosure.
Put the new hard drive in the Mac Book Pro.
Booted into Mac OSX with no problem.
When I rebooted held down the option key to boot into the windows side, it didn't show up as an option.
When I went back into the Mac side, I loaded Disk Utility and saw that I had the Mac partition, the BOOTCAMP partition, and a bunch of unallocated space. When I went into the System Preferences and set the target boot drive to the BOOTCAMP partition and restarted, I got some crazy error about there not being any bootable info on it.
That's where I am at. I have found other posts with people who are having the same problem, but I have yet to find a solution that doesn't involve me buying some 3rd party software. I know it has something to do with (what is called in Microsoft world) the Master Boot Record, but I don't know how to modify that to reflect that the BOOTCAMP partition is a bootable logical drive. I remember in MS DOS land there was some command line FDSK /something command that you would run (I think it was /MBR) to reset the MBR. To me though, all of these terms are shadowy figures in the Ether.
What do I do???
-Ricardo
p.s. I read somewhere to boot off the windows 7 disk and run the system repair tools. I tried that and no change.

I got it. It CAN be done. At least on 10.6
How I made it happen (for free) on Snow Leopard:
1) partition, dupe etc all that jazz that you know. Make the mac side work, which it seems we've all been able to do no issues. I used SuperDuper! It worked just fine. (Had it on a disk. I assume you could use any other free way of doing this.)
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3) Natively running original drive on the windows side. Used DirveImage XML to clone windows partition onto new drive connected externally.
4) Back on new hard drive running natively. (Sorry for all the switching.) You'll note that the new Bootcamp partition is NOT bootable at this point. It won't come up in the usual 'alt on startup' boot menu.
Download rEFInd and install on mac side. Technically this is freeware or w/e, but for the love of god, throw money at this man. He totally deserves it.
5) Restarting the computer, rEFInd's boot manager finally recognizes windows. But you'll find windows is a little messed up and still won't quite boot. Get out your Windows CD and pop it in. Do the 'alt boot' thing. Your boot menu options are now "EFI Manager," "Bootcamp," and "Windows Disk." Or some such. Holy Crap! It recognizes Windows!
6) Boot to the CD and tell it to repair the windows volume. It will. My computer also had to do a disk check next time I booted to Windows, which took for-stupid-ever, but eventually worked. (I went to bed in between.)
7) Everything is running smoothly. Plus, you get the rEFInd boot manager, which is also great.
Deets: I have a late 2010 MBP 13". Snow leopard/Windows 7 32-bit (long story) Moved from original 320GB seagate momentus to new 750GB Seagate Momentus XT.
Feel free to share/copy&paste this solution as you see useful. Cheers!

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hello
i am pretty new at imac so bare with me and i really need help.
IMAC
OS X version 10.9.5 ( i think its os X mavericks ??)
iMac 21. inch , Late 2013
iMac model identifier iMac 14,1
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i read alot of article about but i don't seem to understand much about
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Last login: Mon Feb 16 16:11:46 on console
YLFs-iMac:~ ylf$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            999.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *8.0 GB     disk1
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 WININSTALL              8.0 GB     disk1s1
YLFs-iMac:~ ylf$ diskutil cs list
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found
YLFs-iMac:~ ylf$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0
Password:
gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168
gpt show: /dev/disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167
       start        size index contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640 1951845952      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1952255592     1269536      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1953525128           7
1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
1953525167           1         Sec GPT header
YLFs-iMac:~ ylf$
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Turbostar,
I sure would like to avoid the clean install.
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Same issue here. Very similar 24" iMac, developed the issue after service under AppleCare. In my case the HDD had died, and was replaced with a new 640GB disk.
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Some others on these forums have reported success by zapping PRAM during each reboot. This has not made a difference for me.
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Hello Fortuny,
thanks for helping, although your suggestion does not work.
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