Bootcamp Win10 Sudden Failure to Boot

Hi there everyone,

I've been a Mac user for 14 years but somehow this is the first time I've posted here, though I've been aware of the site for many years. I'm having a boot issue - I'll try to be detailed:

I have a Late 2014 Mac Mini mid-level model (2.6 GHz Core i5, 8GB RAM, Intel Iris graphics). Internal storage is a 500GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD installed about 2 years ago. I'm running macOS Sierra 10.12.5, and Windows 10 Pro x64 v1607 via Bootcamp.

It's been a while since I've had any Bootcamp problems, and I only use Windows once or twice a week. Suddenly, Windows is no longer listed when I hold down option for the boot selection menu. I usually restart into Windows directly using a utility called BootChamp. It is no longer in development because of the introduction of System Integrity Protection in El Capitan, but if you disable SIP, it works fine. I'd lived just fine without SIP since Panther, so it's never been an issue.



I initially restarted with the utility and ran into an error message in a DOS-typical font saying that there is no boot disk, insert one and press any key to continue. That's when I tried the normal option-key boot menu method and discovered Windows was missing.

Paragon NTFS for Mac 15 mounts my BOOTCAMP partition just fine anytime I log into macOS. One thing I did notice is that the Paragon menu icon, which used to refer to Windows as UEFI, now reports it as Legacy.



Already Tried:
1) "Correct Bootcamp Boot Record" in Paragon Hard Disk Manager - completes no problem.
2) "Correct Bootcamp BCD Files" in Paragon Hard Disk Manager - completes no problem.
3) Disk Utility First Aid in Recovery Mode on the macOS partition - completes no problem. (Can't run first aid on the NTFS partition, of course.)
4) Disk Utility First Aid in Recovery Mode on the Samsung SSD volume as a whole - reports problems related to booting, and says that I need to run First Aid in Recovery Mode (which is exactly what I'm doing.... thanks for your excellent programming, Apple.)
5) Checked the partition table using GPT Fdisk - everything looks as it normally would. (I always have gdisk installed.)

I don't know if it's relevant, but a few weeks ago I gave up on installing the Win10 Creators Update (v1703) because it kept failing at 32%. I did have all Windows Updates installed for v1607 last time I used it a week or so ago, as well as Bitdefender.

Files on the NTFS drive are still accessible.

Any ideas?

Alex

First, welcome to our forums and for providing all the excellent details.

I don't know if it's relevant, but a few weeks ago I gave up on installing the Win10 Creators Update (v1703) because it kept failing at 32%. I did have all Windows Updates installed for v1607 last time I used it a week or so ago, as well as Bitdefender.

Click to expand...

My educated guess here is that's what may have caused your problems with Windows 10. I have seen other reports of difficulties and "no boot" after attempts to install the "Creators Update". I believe what may have happened is that your Windows 10 boot sector may have become corrupt during the process.

You may be faced with a reinstall of Windows 10 if you wish to keep on using it. I would ignore the Disk Utility report on the Samsung SSD volume boot problems for now unless something else comes up preventing you from getting into Sierra.

It appears you have a Time Machine backup, how about a cloned backup such as CCC or SuperDuper? You might also want to make a backup of your Windows data using WinClone or as best as you can by copying your data to an external drive with Paragon NTFS.

I also do not understand why Paragon Hard Disk Manager was not able reactivate the Windows boot sector? Keep us updated on your progress.

Sorry I couldn't offer more help. However, we have other members who are more familiar with Windows than I am so hang on for a bit. You may get better answers.

No problem, thanks for your response.

I hadn't even paid attention to the fact that there apparently was a fiasco surrounding this flawed Creators update from Microsoft (though it certainly doesn't surprise me) going back months and months. It's been so long since the date of the initial article indicating issues (February?) that I figured there was no way it was still an issue. I do now see Microsoft warning Bootcamp users to install v1607 before v1703, but as I said, that didn't even work for me.

I agree that it's possible that the Windows 10 boot sector has been corrupted, but I've used Windows since the last time I attempted the update at least twice. Strange that it dies now...

It does explain why the boot sector is reflecting as Legacy rather than UEFI now... (obviously I prefer the latter.)

I'm quite disappointed in Disk Utility's inability to recognize that it is in fact already in Recovery Mode. Major fail on Apple's part.

I have not used CCC or SuperDuper. I'll Google those. I'm familiar with WinClone and twocanoes in general - they seem to have some pretty cool Mac software - but I don't own WinClone. Maybe I should buy it for the future. This time is no worry - I don't keep anything super important on the Windows partition, and I can still access the partition to grab the few things that I want to save via Paragon NTFS.

And you're right - I've found Bootcamp to be a challenge on many occasions over the years, and Paragon's products can work wonders in correcting those inexplicable boot issues. That's why I'm so confused this time.

Since nobody else has responded (no worries) I'm gonna go ahead and reinstall v1607 and not even worry about the Creators Update. (The one thing I'll miss is that new "Paint 3D", because it does so many of the basic functions (cropping/annotation) that Paint etc should have in the first place, but I guess I'm spoiled by Preview. I have the Win10 v1703 + LibreELEC on my Intel NUC which I use mainly for Kodi in my living room, so I've been able to play around with some of the minor new Windows features.)

Off to reinstall Windows....

I've a similar problem in that I too have lost the Bootcamp option when pressing the Option key.

This started after updating Paragon NTFS to version 15 and a crash which caused my system to reboot (mine also shows as Legacy Boot now).

I am placing my unfounded suspicion on Paragon being at fault for whatever has happened.

I will wait it out for a while to see if a solution comes up before reinstalling because like you, I can still see and access the NTFS partition.

Very interesting....

That reminds me, I got everything reinstalled, including Paragon NTFS 15! You could very well have a point, though. They've released two updates recently (past 3 weeks?), only explaining (each time) that the update made the software compatible with High Sierra.

Whether it's nefarious or not, there's more to it than just "both updates were solely the High Sierra compatibility update."

It's also worthy to note that Paragon recently issued an update to their Paragon Hard Disk Manager supposedly to make it compatible with High Sierra and APFS. I have the feeling that Paragon is unloading beta software on us calling it "updates".

So yeah downgraded back to v14. And now my OneDrive and Dropbox accounts on my NTFS drive are not causing Sierra to reboot.

I've highlighted this to Paragon

I've tried a number of ways to resolve this
this

this in various orders

and

all (except for rebuildbcd) reported that they were good to go.

but alasnone restored the windows partition when the option key was passed.

currently backing up what i need on the windows drive and i reinstall.

i had hoped it would not come to this.