"The Startup Disk Cannot Be Partitioned"

Hey everyone

So, I've just invested in a copy of Windows 7 which I was looking to install on my MacBook and I went to partition my hard drive with Boot Camp Assistant when an error message came up: The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition. The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Jounraled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.

I should tell you, about two months ago I installed Ubuntu via Boot Camp out of curiosity, barely used it and it's still there. I'm pretty sure that Ubuntu has something to do with it.

I've looked everywhere online for a solution, including messing around on Disk Utility to reformat my partitions but I'm a novice and haven't got a clue what I'm doing really.

The partitions that show up in disk utility are Macintosh HD, BOOTCAMP, DISK0S4 and Linux Swap (which appears in a grey font :S)

Any ideas on what I should do to install Windows 7? Any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance,

Adam.

That's the problem right there, Bootcamp only allows you to dual boot, so via BC you must restore your HDD to 1 Mac partition and then repartition it using again, Bootcamp.

You should be okay then...

Sur3Mac said:

That's the problem right there, Bootcamp only allows you to dual boot, so via BC you must restore your HDD to 1 Mac partition and then repartition it using again, Bootcamp.

You should be okay then...

Click to expand...

I thought that, but when I tried doing it via Disk Utility, I couldn't work it out. Any idea how to restore them all back to one mac partition?

If you want to restore your HDD to one partition, using disk utility will have a downside, which is that it will delete everything.
By "couldn't work it out" I will assume you don't know how to do this.

This article will show you how it's done.

I suggest that if you have an ext. HDD you clone your OS installation using Super Duper, or Carbon Copy Cloner or equivalent.
Then you can repartition, install, migrate, and then make your new BC partition.