Missing disk space after failed Boot Camp install

My friend was trying to install WinXP today using the Boot Camp Assistant. For whatever reason, the Windows install was borked so he decided to revert back to the single partition. After booting back into Mac OS X, there was 40GB of disk space missing, so we booted from the install disc and ran a disk repair. Now the system sees the full 500GB but Boot Camp doesn't.

Am guessing your friend used Disk Utility to restore the drive back to a single partition instead of using BootCamp Assistant. Been awhile since I dealt with this and don't remember and can't find the actual solution.

Am "assuming" here that BCA will not now allow the option of either creating or restoring?

Would try booting from the OS X disc and running a repair on the drive - not sure if that will do it or not.

Or, you might want to wait until chscag checks in - he's been the expert on this stuff.

kahlil88 said:

My friend was trying to install WinXP today using the Boot Camp Assistant. For whatever reason, the Windows install was borked so he decided to revert back to the single partition. After booting back into Mac OS X, there was 40GB of disk space missing, so we booted from the install disc and ran a disk repair. Now the system sees the full 500GB but Boot Camp doesn't.

Click to expand...

As bobtomay said, he probably didn't use the BC assistant to remove the partition. It's likely the Boot Camp partition probably still exists. Running a disk repair from the install disk isn't going to remove that partition. Boot the machine again with the install media. Only this time instead of doing a disk repair, click on the partition tab. Highlight the BC partition and click on the minus sign. Then drag the partition line from the MacIntosh HD until it encompasses the entire drive. Press apply, and then reboot.

He says that he restored it with BCA. Disk repair fixed it as far as the OS reporting the full capacity, and Disk Utility shows it as having just the one partition filling the whole drive, but BCA is reporting 40GB less.

kahlil88 said:

He says that he restored it with BCA. Disk repair fixed it as far as the OS reporting the full capacity, and Disk Utility shows it as having just the one partition filling the whole drive, but BCA is reporting 40GB less.

Click to expand...

If the above is true, (what he told you) then there's a problem with the disk. If he used the BCA properly to do a restore, it would have correctly reported the size of the restored disk. I just did an experiment with my BC partition by going thru the motions of restoring it. The BCA correctly reported the entire size of the disk to be restored. (I cancelled the restore.... )

Tell him to reset his PRAM / NVRAM to see if that resolves it.