macosx problems when partitioning with bootcamp
my macbook pro (10.5.2) crashed today when i wanted to partition it using bootcamp assistant. it displayed the error message that my computer had to be restarted by holding the power button. i did just that and ended up with a disk that was missing 32gb space. what the fuck?
it seems like the partitioning table wasn’t written properly, so i gave google a chance. i ended up with this page: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
getting my hands dirty with fsck -f wasn’t bad after all!
now it says:
**The volume MacOS X was repaired successfully.
**** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED ****
let’s reboot and find out…
(a minute later)
yay! it worked. 
as bold as i am, i will fire up boot camp assistant a second time. it’s bound to work eventually…
Status: Partitioning disk…
sounds kinda familiar.
since it is clucking along for a while anyway, i will fill you in with the inside scoop.
last time i told you i installed parallels and it worked. and now i am back to bootcamp?
yeah, you read right. parallels should be capable to run vista on the bootcamp partition as a vm, too.
since i spent quite a lot of money on the (stupid) vista license, i might as well use it.
so, here we go again.
i am happy that i made a backup image of the system with “winclone” before. i still hope it works… the partitioning is the same as it was before with 32gb. let’s see…
crap!
crashed again.
“You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.”
:-\
i could leave it at that for now and just use parallels. maybe apple will fix this in an upcoming patch.
or - i could give it another shot.
after firing up the macbook pro with an inserted leopard installer dvd (remeber to press “c” to boot from the dvd) i went into Utilities>Disk Utility and in the partition segment i tried to add another partition with 32gb to see if it works here.
but it didn’t. it said: “Partition failed: No Space left on the Device.”
look at that! there can only be something else blocking it. another google search revealed that if you have parallels already installed, the partitioning will stall because the virtual harddisk file cannot be moved.
http://installingcats.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/dual-boot-os-x-leopard-tiger-105-104-installation/
i rebooted, moved the parallels virtual machine folder to a different location on an external harddrive and booted with the leopard disk again. now it actually worked. i ended up with two partitions.
i wanted to make sure bootcamp would install correctly, that’s why i removed it again (yeah - you read it right. i deleted the newly created partition right away).
after rebooting and firing up the boot camp assistant i set the partition to 32gb and hit the “partition” button. and this time it really looked good - the popup to insert the windows installer disc came up and right now it is booting into bootcamp.
any suggestions, or improvements to be made?
contact me or leave a comment.
thank you!