How to Restore Deleted Macintosh HD

[alan01px2017]

Hi, I'm new to Mac Forums (which is awesome, I found a lot of solutions to my problems here). I have a problem that I must have searched a billion times for answers but I couldn't find it. It's probably because this mistake I made was the dumbest in HISTORY! I hope you experts can help me with my problem.

Every time I turn on my mac and press "option", the only option I see is Windows, no Macintosh HD. The problem is, I didn't load the Windows properly when I was installing it and now, everytime I click Windows, it says BOOTMGR missing and to press ctrl + alt + del to restart the mac (the function keys don't work). So how exactly to I find Macintosh again? I can't put any CDs in and the only function there is is the corrupted Windows option.

So here's how this problem started. I was using bootcamp to install windows but during the process where it asks me for the disk space formatting to put windows in (it has partition 0, 1, 2, etc. and asks you to continue with the one with at least 128 MB to put it in). I deleted partition 1, 2, and 3 at the step and the only one located was the space that was "unallocated" and I pressed "new" and I accidentally setted it to 15648 (don't call exactly) MB which is equivalent to 149 GB (my entire mac is only 139) and it actually continued. But then when it was loading files, I figured something was wrong and I cancelled it, then I force powered it down. (Now here is where I made the dumbest mistake ever), I turned on the mac and shook my mac book pro to get the CD out (it came out), but then was when it said the BOOTMGR was missing and Macintosh HD was deleted. Anyone have a solution to this problem???

 

[SammySlim]

Unfortunately, you inadvertently deleted the MacOS from your hard drive. Your only solution, unfortunately, is to reinstall OSX from your install disc. Hopefully you made a backup of your OSX before this all happened but things will not be recoverable after the reinstall.

And you're not the first to do this, by the way - the best insurance against it is to print out the Boot Camp installation instructions and follow them exactly. Some of the install is a bit counterintuitive.

Cheers

 

[alan01px2017]

Install CD

I can't exactly do that, the computer during power on won't read any CD's put in nor will the Windows partition.

 

[alan01px2017]

Viewing the Deleted Partition

Ok so inserting the Install DVD was no use for it just ejected it. The other day, I pressed these random keys, and all of a sudden, a sort of faded disk utility (i think) icon appeared to the right of Windows; I can't exactly click on it but does anyone know what it means? Or how to view it again? I forgot the key combination...

 

[cm105bpp]

I think the Boot Option is part of the Mac firmware, which you can erase by mistake. If you insert the OS X Install DVD and hold the OPTION key while you press the Power-on button, and keep holding the OPTION key down until the screen displays the boot options available (the DVD and some unknown hard drive in your case), you should then be able to select the Install DVD and boot it. You do have to hold the OPTION key until the spinning indicator goes away and I think the screen changes color. Can't remember the exact screen change, but you can certainly hold it down until the boot options are displayed. Once you boot into the Install and selected your language, you can go into the Disk Utility to delete the corrupted partition and start from scratch.

I'm a PC user who switched to a Macbook Pro as my primary computer 3 years ago, replaced my Mac hard-drive twice. I helps to have another PC nearby while doing this so you can brose the web for help.