Make Windows a partition on my Macbook Pro again!

October 6, 2007 2:36 PM

How to fix screwed up Windows partition on my new Macbook Pro?

I have two Macbook Pros -- an "old" one (from July) that got pretty beat up in an accident recently, and a new one that was a replacement. The old one still works, so I tried to using Migration Assistant to move my data from the old to the new.

Almost everything went well, except the migration of my Windows partition (I've been using Boot Camp). Instead of creating a separate partition, Migration Assistant moved it to the os x partition, under the file "/Files from Untitled" (Untitled being the name of my Windows partition on the old computer).

I realize the "easiest" thing to do would be to just delete the new "/Files from Untitled" folder, create a new partition with bootcamp and reinstall Windows. Only problem is, although my Windows is a legal copy, it's from my school and came with a license that expired for installation 5 days after downloaded (back in August). In other words, I don't know if I can get a working copy of Windows to install.

So, how can I move this data to a bootable partition and get Windows to work again?

posted by jk252b to technology (2 comments total)

It probably created a disk image of your old partition.

If that's correct, this article should be able to help you.

Basically it comes down to this:
* create a new boot camp partition
* use windows setup to format the disk as fat32
* reboot in mac os
* empty the new windows partition
* open the disk image
* copy the contents of the disk image to the new windows partition
* light a candle
* check if it boots
* if yes, throw away the disk image.

As always, make backups of important data before attempting this procedure.
posted by lodev at 3:03 PM on October 6, 2007

Here's what you should do. Use Boot Camp Assistant to create a partition of equal size (erring on the side of larger) as your last Windows partition. Download NetRestore v3.3 from bombich.com. If your old partition was NTFS-formatted, also download and install ntfsprogs.

Now boot your old mac in target disk mode (by holding down T at boot up) and connect it to your new mac with a firewire cable. Launch NetRestore Helper and use it to create an image of your old windows partition, saving it to your mac partition. Once that's done, use NetRestore to restore the image to your new Windows partition.

One problem you'll likely run in to is that windows will detect the hardware change and ask you to reactivate it on the new computer.
posted by pmbuko at 5:07 PM on October 6, 2007