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Mac with a Windows partition - Mac won’t boot up

O

oozeymc

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 19, 2010
29
1
Hi all

I am in need of some help. I’d really appreciate anything people might be able to offer.

I partitioned my iMac at the beginning of Covid to enable me to run Windows for work. Windows has been working fine and for a while my Mac side was too but I think I partitioned too much space off for Windows and left too little for the Mac.

The Mac now won’t boot up and hangs on the white Apple logo with the load bar full.

I am assuming that the Mac for whatever reason has grown bigger than the space it has allocated. Windows still runs fine.

I would be more than happy to transfer the few work files I have on Windows to OneDrive and simply remove Windows and go back to Mac, but because it won’t boot, I cannot now get the Boot Camp to remove it.

Can anyone offer any advice as to how best to approach this? Can I go to Disk Utility in Mac safe mode and delete the partition or is there a better way?

Thanks in advance - I miss my Mac!
 
Hi, I do not have a solution per se. However, are you able go into your mac partition and move some big files to an external disk?

Something like that might work.

Did you try to start in safemode?
 
I had a macbook pro that died completely due to running it at almost 100% full disk. I could reach it by target disk mode and retrieve the data but I never got it to boot.
 
You should always be able to go into recovery mode and resinstall the system OS. From there you can also completely reformat the drive, although you will lose everything by doing so.

How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support

You can use macOS Recovery, your computer's built-in recovery system, to reinstall the Mac operating system. Reinstalling macOS doesn't remove your personal data.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

In regards to Windows and MacOS... both require a decent amount of space for the OS and files that you use. Unless you have a really large drive, you are better off using an external drive to boot into Windows with. Now getting Windows to install on an external drive is a challenge in and of itself.

How big is your drive and how much space did you allocate to the partitions?
 
First, hope you have a backup of the Mac partition.

Having said that, I see postings like yours at least once a week here.
To wit, the user has a bootcamp partition installed, and seems to have lost the ability to boot back into the original Mac partition.

I've never used bootcamp and don't recommend its use, but having said that, if nothing else you try works, there is a 100% way to "get back" the Mac partition:

That is:
- Boot from the recovery partition, or a bootable cloned backup, or some other way (such as from a USB flashdrive with an installer on it)
- ERASE the ENTIRE drive back into Mac format
- Install a fresh copy of the Mac OS (from internet recovery or a USB installer) and then restore your data from your Mac backup

(you could also "re-clone" your Mac OS install from a bootable cloned backup).

This WILL "get you back" to the Mac OS.
But ... without a backup... it's gonna WIPE OUT everything that was on the drive.
 
Last edited:
I would go with Fishrrmans advice. IF you dont have a clone of your mac partition. I would Target disk and do a CCC clone if not only to restore it afterwards, but to get to your data.

Seems like a plan, let us know how you fare :)
 
Before erasing (hope you have backup of your Mac data), you can backup your bootcamp partition using WinClone.

Also you can see if there's local Apple authorized company, and pay them for service. Look it up https://locate.apple.com
 
I have used PARALLELS to have a Windows virtual machine running on my mac versus trying to use BootCamp. Had too many issues with Bootcamp and beta testing various software. Parallels works fine and suggest you try that approach after re-installing your macOS and re-partitioning.
 
aibloop said:
Hi, I do not have a solution per se. However, are you able go into your mac partition and move some big files to an external disk?

Something like that might work.

Did you try to start in safemode?
Click to expand...
It won’t start is safe mode unfortunately.
 
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