Boot Camp Blunders

[CthulhuDawn]

I had a friend come by earlier and she left her new MacBook with me to fix. She tried to install Windows through Boot Camp via an old Dell XP Restore CD (doh!). Whenever you turn it on it only displays the error:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

Now, when I turn it on and hold down the option key, the Windows hard drive is the only one that shows up. No OS X. Am I correct in assuming that she has told Windows to take over her hard disk and hosed up OS X completely? Is all of her OS X data gone beyond reasonable recovery?

Thanks.

 

[Kosamus]

ouch

That looks to be the case, installing on the osx.....xp overwrote it

 

[Dimwhit]

You should boot it up in Target mode and mount it as an external drive to another computer. Check out what's there at that point. If there is no Mac install showing up anywhere, she's probably hosed.

 

[ravenvii]

It's gone.

What you have to do is reinstall OS X from the software DVDs that came with the machine. Once that's finished, if you want to install XP from that restore disk, here's how to do it.

Get Parallels. Don't pay for it, just use it as a trial. Install the restore of Windows on it. Once that's done and you're in Windows, install nLite (www.nliteos.com). Then use the program to strip the previous slipstreaming on the Dell disc. Then make sure it has SP2. If not, then slipstream it in. Then burn a new disc. Now, use THAT disc during the Boot Camp process. And there you go.

 

[CthulhuDawn]

Thanks for all the input.

I might try it in Target Mode just to see. Do you have to connect via Firewire for that or will male/male USB work also?

 

[Dimwhit]

Thanks for all the input.

I might try it in Target Mode just to see. Do you have to connect via Firewire for that or will male/male USB work also?

Firewire only, I believe.

 

[CthulhuDawn]

Alright, I was able to hunt down a Firewire cable and I followed all of the instructions for Target Disk Mode on the Apple website. Unfortunately, no matter what I have tried, her hard disk will not show up on my MBP's desktop or in the /Volumes/ directory in Terminal.

I guess she's done for as far as data goes (I'm not pulling the hard drive out). I am now under the impression that the file system needs to be intact for Target Disk Mode to work?

Thanks.

Edit: In other words, Target Disk Mode doesn't know what the hell to do with a Windows partition?

 

[Dimwhit]

I guess she's done for as far as data goes (I'm not pulling the hard drive out). I am now under the impression that the file system needs to be intact for Target Disk Mode to work?

Did you open up Disk Utility to see what it could do? It should detect a drive, even if it's unmountable. If it does, you could try repairing it. DiskWarrior would also be a good program to try that with, though I don't know if it will do anything with a Windows partition.

 

[xappeal]

The data is far from gone. Just don't make any more read or writes to the disk.


Download data rescue II or omething similar. Boot the computer into target disk mode and recover off the whole disk rather than the partition using another mac disk to recover onto.

You can get back most of your docs, just not files that have unrecognised file types.

Cheers