Lost Bootcamp > Windows gone

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We had some rapid-sequence blackouts here over the weekend which may or may not have caused, or had some hand in, the loss of me being able to boot into Windows Vista via bootcamp.

Last time I booted out of windows back to OS, my iMac 'hung', then booted back into Windows, so I tried again, it hung again but made repeated boot-up tones. Panicking a bit, I turned the iMac off, then powered on with the OS disc loaded.

All came up ok, eventually, with no apparent errors.

However, I've just tried to boot into Windows, but when I go to Sys Pref/Startup Disk, the Windows disc has gone. Also, when I try to run Boot Camp Assistant I see this error....

"Boot Camp Assistant cannot be Used"
You must update your computer's boot ROM
firmware before using this assistant

...which all looks very grim and looking potentially like sending the machine away time.

Unless of course, you experts out there can provide some advice and guidance and get me out of this hole! I have Time Machine from before the 'event' if that helps

Many Thanks

.......Forgot to say, I've still got the Bootcamp drive on my Apple desktop and can see all the files on it so I can still access the partition ok
 

chscag

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Sounds like you machine might have gotten momentary "brain damage" due to the blackouts. Let's try to reset the NVRAM and PRAM. LINK

Post back results and we can go from there.

Regards.
 
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rholmes01
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Brilliant, thanks chscag - that was the issue - temporary brain damage as you put it.

I followed the link, did the reset and the Bootcamp disk is back as an option in the Startup Disk panel.

I've booted over and booted back, all is ok.

Again, many thanks for your assist.
 

chscag

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Glad to hear you're back up and running. Might be a good idea to purchase an UPS unit if you suffer from frequent blackouts in your area. An UPS will give protection against surges and can keep your iMac up and running until you can get it shut down normally. It also provides isolation from the mains.

Regards.
 
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i did lots of looking and found lots of discussions with no solutions. i had a problem with the bootcamp (and macos) not showing up in the startup disk control panel. sure, i could hold down the option key at startup and choose mac or windows, or use BootChamp (kainjow) to boot into windows. the problem was with the Partition Map Scheme for the entire disk. it needs to be "GUID Partition Table" rather than MBR (or Apple). i didnt want to reformat the entire drive to fix the problem and then restore the mac and windows data, so i used iPartition (Coriolis Systems :: Products :: iPartition). it converted the partition scheme and everything now works as it should.
 

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