Windows partition missing at boot up screen

[ksabee]

Hi, the thread subject pretty much says it. Restarting my Mac does not show the Bootcamp partition like it normally does. It worked fine about a week ago.

I'm not too technically savvy so I stay away from meddling with the partitions. The only thing I remember doing in the last week was repairing my Mac partition disk by restarting using cmd+r, because I was advised to repair the disk by Onyx. But this would not have anything to do with the Windows partition would it?

I'm using a 2011 Mac running Mavericks and Windows 7

Every article I found related to a "missing Windows partition" was when people tried shrinking or re-adjusting the partition size, I've never done this.

If there's no other choice, I don't mind losing the data on my Windows partition if this can prevent having to re-create and reinstall a Windows partition (though I get the feeling losing data in the Windows partition goes hand in hand with pretty much losing the whole partition itself :l )

Thanks

 

[chscag]

Let's find out first if the partition is missing (removed) or just not showing up for some reason. Boot to your recovery partition by using command + r and run Disk Utility. Is the partition visible to Disk Utility?

 

[harryb2448]

And the Bootcamp partition only shows if you hold down the Option keys to show all available drives/partitions. Booting in the usual manner does not show this.

 

[ksabee]

Let's find out first if the partition is missing (removed) or just not showing up for some reason. Boot to your recovery partition by using command + r and run Disk Utility. Is the partition visible to Disk Utility?

It's just not showing up on the boot up screen when I restart while holding the option key. It shows up on disk utility (shows up through recovery partition disk utility as well), I can even view the files on Bootcamp as Read-Only through my Mac partition's file explorer. It hasn't got removed or deleted, it just isn't showing up on the regular boot up screen. It can't be a hard drive crash since my Mac partition works fine. :S

I used my Windows partition just one week ago, it worked fine.

 

[chscag]

OK, that means the Windows 7 boot sector was likely zonked or damaged. You should still have your original Windows 7 DVD as you will need it to do a repair. Follow the Microsoft instructions on how to repair your Windows 7. Keep in mind the instructions are for a Windows PC but they will also work for your Mac. Just be careful you don't "repair" your OS X partition.

Tom's Hardware Instructions to repair Windows 7

 

[ksabee]

When I boot up through the Windows 7 installation disk, it goes straight into the installation process (and recognises the existing bootcamp partition here as well), the option to repair Windows 7 does not even show up.

From searching online, I'm apparently supposed to change the startup settings in my laptop's BIOS, and the instructions that follow are for a windows system. How does this work for a Mac?

Just another question, will wiping my bootcamp partition and doing the whole dual boot installation all over again work fine without problems (this will be the 2nd time I'm reinstalling Windows), or is there anything I should be wary of? I'll probably do that if this gets too complicated.

 

[chscag]

When I boot up through the Windows 7 installation disk, it goes straight into the installation process (and recognises the existing bootcamp partition here as well), the option to repair Windows 7 does not even show up.

It should have offered to do a repair installation during the install process. It will even give you the choice of what to repair. Did you allow the installation to proceed far enough along?

From searching online, I'm apparently supposed to change the startup settings in my laptop's BIOS, and the instructions that follow are for a windows system. How does this work for a Mac?

You can ignore that part since a Mac does not use a BIOS.

Just another question, will wiping my bootcamp partition and doing the whole dual boot installation all over again work fine without problems (this will be the 2nd time I'm reinstalling Windows), or is there anything I should be wary of? I'll probably do that if this gets too complicated.

It should work OK. Use the Boot Camp assistant to remove your Windows partition and start over. It's a real pain to have to do that several times.

Are you using your Windows installation to play games or running something that's graphic intensive? If not, you might want to consider running Windows in a VM. VirtualBox from Oracle is free and works well.

 

[ksabee]

It should have offered to do a repair installation during the install process. It will even give you the choice of what to repair. Did you allow the installation to proceed far enough along?

It asked me to choose a partition to install Windows on, and showed a "Windows cannot be installed on this partition" message for all the partitions. So there was nothing I could do beyond that point

Are you using your Windows installation to play games or running something that's graphic intensive? If not, you might want to consider running Windows in a VM. VirtualBox from Oracle is free and works well.

I mostly use it for games (which have recommended hardware requirements that aren't really met by my Mac) and occasionally Windows-only software (AutoCAD Civil 3D being the most power sapping application of the ones I've used). I'm guessing that rules out VirtualBox? But what exactly can I do with VirtualBox? How does it work?