I am in DESPERATE need of HELP! (Boot Camp Problem)

[djrelentt]

Hey everyone,

I always use Windows 7 on a Boot Camp partition on my MBP. I am running OSK 10.9.5. For some reason I started my Macbook Pro today and my partition was gone. It shows in Disk Utilities but it is greyed out (See image here - https://www.dropbox.com/s/d3eorx8wk3muwlr/Screen Shot 2016-05-05 at 7.54.36 AM.png?dl=0).

I tried restarting it a bunch of times while holding alt/option like I always have to do and it just shows my Mac HD... It's weird because the Recovery disk doesn't show up anymore either.

The only thing that I did recently was encrypt my entire drive using File Vault. I really hope I didn't ruin anything... I use it to make music on and I am so nervous I lost everything.

If anyone can help me, I would really really appreciate it!! I am panicking!!!

Thanks.

 

[DeltaMac]

I think your next step will be to turn OFF File Vault.
Restart your Mac after turning off File Vault.
Then, boot to your Win7 installer, and do a Windows repair install to attempt to repair your Windows boot blocks.

And, it's Windows, you didn't lose everything.
You would still have your backup for the Windows partition, right?

You do have a backup?

 

[zone23]

Before you jump to windows 10 let me ask this, do you use any type of virtual machines like Parallels?

 

[djrelentt]

I think your next step will be to turn OFF File Vault.
Restart your Mac after turning off File Vault.
Then, boot to your Win7 installer, and do a Windows repair install to attempt to repair your Windows boot blocks.

And, it's Windows, you didn't lose everything.
You would still have your backup for the Windows partition, right?

You do have a backup?

Thanks for the response. I have no idea where the Windows 7 disk is. I can't remember if I used a CD or a disk image I found on the internet. Unfortunately, I never made a backup of the Windows partition. I thought Time Machine was backing up the windows files also this whole time. I don't know why I thought that. So, no. I have no backup.

Should I go buy a Windows 7 disk and try to boot from that somehow? I turned off FileVault and I can now see the option to boot into Windows when I start the computer while holding OPTION. When I click it, it says This operating system cannot be found. (Something like that). I'm not sure what I should do.
[doublepost=1462458779][/doublepost]

Before you jump to windows 10 let me ask this, do you use any type of virtual machines like Parallels?

No. I don't like using those. I liked using Bootcamp because it was much faster and more reliable. I use FL Studio; a music production program and for some reason, it always gave me issues on Parallels...

 

[zone23]

Thanks for the response. I have no idea where the Windows 7 disk is. I can't remember if I used a CD or a disk image I found on the internet. Unfortunately, I never made a backup of the Windows partition. I thought Time Machine was backing up the windows files also this whole time. I don't know why I thought that. So, no. I have no backup.

Should I go buy a Windows 7 disk and try to boot from that somehow? I turned off FileVault and I can now see the option to boot into Windows when I start the computer while holding OPTION. When I click it, it says This operating system cannot be found. (Something like that). I'm not sure what I should do.
[doublepost=1462458779][/doublepost]

No. I don't like using those. I liked using Bootcamp because it was much faster and more reliable. I use FL Studio; a music production program and for some reason, it always gave me issues on Parallels...

Okay just asking because once windows 10 is activated in bootcamp it cannot be activated again in a VM. You need another key and have to jump through a bunch of hoops. Sounds like your good though. Oh and one more thing if you care about your privacy you will need to turn off a bunch of stuff in Windows 10.

 

[DeltaMac]

Right...
Find a Win7 installer.
Boot to it -
Run a Windows repair install - it's a choice on the setup screen when you boot to the Win installer.

However, it really seems that your Windows partition is just gone - so I would expect that the Windows repair install will ALSO report that there's no Windows system found = likely that your drive is failing.

 

[djrelentt]

Right...
Find a Win7 installer.
Boot to it -
Run a Windows repair install - it's a choice on the setup screen when you boot to the Win installer.

However, it really seems that your Windows partition is just gone - so I would expect that the Windows repair install will ALSO report that there's no Windows system found = likely that your drive is failing.

I have the partition made on my original 1TB flash drive that came with my mac. If the drive was failing, wouldnt it ruin the rest of the drive too? Thanks for the reply.
[doublepost=1462489960][/doublepost]

Okay just asking because once windows 10 is activated in bootcamp it cannot be activated again in a VM. You need another key and have to jump through a bunch of hoops. Sounds like your good though. Oh and one more thing if you care about your privacy you will need to turn off a bunch of stuff in Windows 10.

Ok well I hope I can somehow figure out how to install 10 and still have access to all of my files...

 

[ActionableMango]

Greyed out could mean a lot of things. It's not necessarily gone.

Can you explain what method you normally used to boot into Windows, and what it is that is preventing you from doing that now?

When you hold ALT/OPTION at bootup, do you see the Windows partition as a bootable drive?

Have you installed any third party drivers in OS X for reading/writing NTFS? Other common drivers are called MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. Do you have anything like this installed? (I installed Paragon and it makes NTFS drives, ironically, unavailable in certain Apple system applications like Disk Utility and Startup Disk.)

 

[djrelentt]

Greyed out could mean a lot of things. It's not necessarily gone.

Can you explain what method you normally used to boot into Windows, and what it is that is preventing you from doing that now?

When you hold ALT/OPTION at bootup, do you see the Windows partition as a bootable drive?

Have you installed any third party drivers in OS X for reading/writing NTFS? Other common drivers are called MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. Do you have anything like this installed? (I installed Paragon and it makes NTFS drives, ironically, unavailable in certain Apple system applications like Disk Utility and Startup Disk.)

I would always have to restart OSX and hold ALT and then choose my Windows partition. But as of yesterday, the Windows option went missing (after I encrypted the system) and only shows up Macintosh HD. I have MacFuse installed already and FUSE for OSX. I haven't installed NTFS-3G yet. I tried downloading it last night and I didn't try it yet.

I ran some commands and here is what terminal has to say:

Last login: Fri May 6 06:40:05 on ttys000

Bennys-MacBook-Pro:~ djrelentt$ 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 623.4 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data 202.0 GB disk0s4

Bennys-MacBook-Pro:~ djrelentt$ diskutil cs list

No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

Bennys-MacBook-Pro:~ djrelentt$

Bennys-MacBook-Pro:~ djrelentt$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=1000555581440; sectorsize=512; blocks=1954210120

gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1954210119

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 1217596352 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1218005992 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1219275528 340403448

1559678976 394530816 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

1954209792 295

1954210087 32 Sec GPT table

1954210119 1 Sec GPT header

Bennys-MacBook-Pro:~ djrelentt$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0geometry: 121643/255/63 [1954210120 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 - 1217596352] HFS+

3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1218005992 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

4: 0C 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1559678976 - 394530816] Win95 FAT32L

Bennys-MacBook-Pro:~ djrelentt$

 

[DeltaMac]

...
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
...

I suspect that your Windows boot blocks are corrupted. A repair install of Win7 should fix that.
More info here
Step one - you need a Windows 7 installer ISO, or a Win7 installer CD, etc. to repair your Windows installation.

 

[djrelentt]

I suspect that your Windows boot blocks are corrupted. A repair install of Win7 should fix that.
More info here
Step one - you need a Windows 7 installer ISO, or a Win7 installer CD, etc. to repair your Windows installation.

I tried to repair it after booting from the Windows 7 disc. Nothing helped.

 

[DeltaMac]

Curious

Nothing helped.

Do you mean that the repair completed (It did find a Windows system), but did not help ?
or, that the repair couldn't find a Windows system to repair?

 

[djrelentt]

Curious


Do you mean that the repair completed (It did find a Windows system), but did not help ?
or, that the repair couldn't find a Windows system to repair?

The repair completed but did not help repair the boot issue. I still cannot boot into windows via bootcamp. Please see my thread on the Apple discussions and maybe you can help from where I am at now. I am trying to rebuild my MBR... https://discussions.apple.com/message/30202242#30202242

Thanks

 

[djrelentt]

I finally got it working...... If anyone is having the same problem I had, you can read my thread on the Apple Support Forums. A dude walked me through the whole process ------> https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7554438?start=0&tstart=0