#10 Recover a Windows installation with rEFIt?
Hi,
I did what one probably shouldn't do, which was to resize and repartition my OS X volume after installing Boot Camp, but without installing rEFIt.
My Windows volume shows up in the OS X Finder, and it looks like all the files are still OK, but I couldn't boot it. I get a message complaining that it can't boot; I'm sorry, but I forget the exact message.
I tried booting off the Windows XP install CD to get into the Recovery Console, where I tried boot FIXBOOT and FIXMBR, but to no avail.
I burned a rEFIt 0.9 CD, and when I tried booting Windows either from EFI or from hard disk, I got that same error message (which I don't remember).
The rEFIt Partitioning Tool wanted to fix my MBR; after I allowed it to, if I try to boot Windows from hard disk, I get "Error loading operating system", and if I try to boot Windows from EFI, it just sits there for a long time, probably hung. Sometimes the screen is grey with the gray Windows Flag icon, sometimes the screen is black.
If I hold the Option key at boot, I now get an option to boot Windows (which I didn't before), but I still get "Error loading operating system".
I'm willing to reformat and reinstall if that's what it would take, but it would take a lot of time to get back to what I need to productively work on this machine. Hopefully you have a solution for me.
Thanks for your help! -- Mike Crawford
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It looks like my problem is that rEFIt's partition tool didn't include my Windows partition in the MBR partition table. I have four HFS+ partitions, plus the EFI Protective Partition and my Windows partition.
The Windows partition was placed at the end of the drive by Boot Camp. At first I had just one HFS+ partition, but I divided it in four with OS X' diskutil.
Then rEFIt sync'ed up my partitions, it left the last HFS+ partition and the Windows partition out.
I think I can fix it manually with sfdisk if I can get a LiveCD to boot; but I'm having a problem common to many who try to boot a Mac Pro off a linux CD, in which I get the message "Looking for CD-ROM at /newroot/dev/hda...", then a long pause, a bunch of error messages then a kernel panic.
I'm going to look for another LiveCD - if you can recommend one, I'd appreciate it.
What would be really handy would be to port sfdisk to the EFI shell. It lets you read and write partition tables with explicit LBA offsets. Most partition tools don't allow such precise control, and so aren't useful for repairing munged partition tables.
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This page:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=234676&page=5
got me booting of the Mactel-Linux liveCD. Give the boot command line:
nosplay irqpoll acpi=off
I was able to fix up my partition table, but now I get a complaint about a bad BOOT.INI from the Windows boot loader. I think it's because my Windows partition is on a different partition number than it was originally installed on. I'm going to try editing it in the XP recovery console.
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Somewhere in the process of monkeying with my partition tables, I entered an incorrect sector count, and massively corrupted my Windows partition.
It's seeming to me like rEFIt doesn't like having more than four GPT partitions - I had four HFS+ volumes, plus a Windows volume and the EFI partition.
I decided I'm better off reformatting and reinstalling. I'm just going to have two HFS+ partitions plus the Windows partition.
But I still have a question - do I really need the EFI partition? Your FAQ seems to say I don't. If I got rid of it, I could have four partitions for operating systems.