idefrag breaking bootcamp?

Hi all,

Has anyone else had problems with idefrag and bootcamp? I ran a "quick (on-line)" defrag on my osx partition, never touched the bootcamp one and every since then bootcamp doesn't boot (it blue screens and restarts during bootup). Weird thing is xp still boots in parallels without any trouble! Anyone else had this prob or know how to fix it without having to re-install everything?

All the best
Simon

I have read some reviews that claim iDefrag is not to be trusted, that it can corrupt your drive, however, i cannot probe this by myself.

sjtaylor84 said:

Hi all,

Has anyone else had problems with idefrag and bootcamp? I ran a "quick (on-line)" defrag on my osx partition, never touched the bootcamp one and every since then bootcamp doesn't boot (it blue screens and restarts during bootup). Weird thing is xp still boots in parallels without any trouble! Anyone else had this prob or know how to fix it without having to re-install everything?

All the best
Simon

Click to expand...

I'm guessing that iDegrag broke the MBR (or its equivalent when using Bootcamp). The MBR is a section of your HDD that loads the bootloader. It isn't part of a specific partition, it is usually just the first few bits of the disk structure.

I'm not absolutely certain of what this will do, but you might want to give this a try. If you are attached to the Bootcamp partition using Parallels, try booting off a Windows XP CD in Parallels. When the setup screen appears, choose option 'R' for repair. When you get into the Recovery Console, try the following command:

fixmbr

then, try...

fixboot

Again, this is just a guess - it might not work because a Mac hard disk is structured differently than a Windows disk. Bootcamp may very well use a special version of the MBR or otherwise trick the machine into booting the Windows partition with a proprietary technology.

And one more thing - iDefrag is really not necessary unless you consistently keep your hard disk at or very near capacity. If there is enough elbow room on the drive, HFS will defrag itself automatically.

thanks for the reply, I get some scarey messages tho when using fixmbr and fixboot:

fixmbr does this:

**CAUTION**
This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid boot record
FIXMBR may damage you partition tables if you proceed
This could cause all the partitions on the current hard disk to become inaccessible.
If you are not having problems accessing your drive, do not continue
Are you sure you want to write a new MBR?

I said no at this point

After typing fixboot it said:

Are you sure you want to write a new bootsector to the partition C: ?


I'm not really certain at all of what the risks are, does anyone know if this is safe to do?

sjtaylor84 said:

thanks for the reply, I get some scarey messages tho when using fixmbr and fixboot:

fixmbr does this:

**CAUTION**
This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid boot record
FIXMBR may damage you partition tables if you proceed
This could cause all the partitions on the current hard disk to become inaccessible.
If you are not having problems accessing your drive, do not continue
Are you sure you want to write a new MBR?

I said no at this point

After typing fixboot it said:

Are you sure you want to write a new bootsector to the partition C: ?


I'm not really certain at all of what the risks are, does anyone know if this is safe to do?

Click to expand...

Those are the standard messages. I do NOT know how or if this will effect your Mac OS X partition, so if you decide to try it, definitely do backup your drive.

Don't know if this might shed some light but when I boot bootcamp and it bluescreens the technical information says:

Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xBACCF524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I hope this means something to somebody!

Simon

sjtaylor84 said:

Don't know if this might shed some light but when I boot bootcamp and it bluescreens the technical information says:

Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xBACCF524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I hope this means something to somebody!

Simon

Click to expand...

Typical Blue Screen of Death. What I DO know for sure is that you've got a corrupted MBR/bootloader. What I don't know is whether you can fix it without breaking your Mac OS installation.

So, to answer your question about whether it means something to somebody - absolutely. What I don't know is if/how it can be fixed without breaking your Mac OS partition.

My recommendation? Back-up your disk, try the procedure I recommended. If it works, great - if not, restore your system.