Multiboot got very messed up

[-†Krad†-]

Hey guys, I have another problem. I had a perfeclt running windows 7 and snow leopard dual boot. Yesterday I tried to install Linux mint, but I decided not to install it, and exited the setup when it told me to choose an installation partition. However, I also somewhat tampered with gparted. All I did was to change the windows 7 drive label an format a Fat partition I had made for Linux, into ntfs. After that neither windows 7 nor snow leopard booted. I went back into gparted and changed everything back o how it was before but still to no avail.

Also, whenever I add a boot flag to a drive, that drive is the only on that doesn't show up. I thought gparted was messed up, so I tried to repair with my win 7 disk. However the repair tells me my windows version is not compatible (although it worked before). So then I tried to boot into my windows partition using a chameleon disk I had. It worked, but windows told me my bootsector was messed up, and to restart with the repair disk. The repair disk keeps telling me the windows version is not compatible, and I end up in a circle.

Then I tried to boot snow leopard and I got A kernel panic.

 

 

Whew...that was a lot. I have no idea where to go with this. I will try to fix it and post updates , but does anyone know where to start?

[mrinehart93]

Did your OS X install depend on Chameleon? If so, that's probably why you got the kernel panic (missing kext's or w/e). I'd suggesting booting Windows 7 using Chameleon. Once in your Windows, download a program called "EasyBCD". There are options in there that *should* be able to fix your problems, since it lets you recreate boot sectors and such. Once you are able to boot into Windows without any problems, go into EasyBCD, and then Add/Remove entries. Click the tab labeled Mac, then add an entry as the type "Generic OSx86 PC" or w/e that's called. Now, you should be able to boot into OS X through the Windows bootloader.

[-†Krad†-]

Well, I can't boot windows because it keeps telling me that my bcd is messed up. Whenever I try to fix it with the repair disk, the disk yells me that my windows version is incompatible with the recovery software, although it had worked before.

[mrinehart93]

I thought you said you were able to boot Windows using Chameleon?

[-†Krad†-]

Sorry if it wasn't clear. I meant that I can LOAD windows, but whenever it loads it says that the bcd is screwed up and that I need to use the repair disk to fix it and be able to boot into the os itself. However, the repair disk says my windows version is incompatible and thus I am not able to fix the messed up bcd. Basically I'm trying to fix without having to reinstall everything, because that is a pain.

 

UPDATE: All right well I checked some stuff out.

1) windows partition is now seen as an unrecognized file system by everything

2) if a set a partition as active, that partition will not show up I the chameleon menu

3) windows will never show up

 

at this point I'm beginning to think a fresh reinstall would be best but I really don't want to lose the stuff on my hdd. Reinstalling stuff is a pain in the a**. the whole dual boot process takes at least a few hours.

[-†Krad†-]

Ok guys, turns out I must not format. I typed a 3 page essay that is due on friday, and I don't have it anywhere else. I don't care if snow leopard is gone, I just need windows working again.

 

Heck, I already deleted the snow leopard and efi partition, hoping the scheme would change back to mbr. It didn't work. Does anyone know how to fix this?! In gparted the windows partition still comes up as unrecognized.

[srs5694]

Try using PartedMagic or System Rescue CD. Open a text-mode shell windows and type the following commands:

 

fdisk -lu
gdisk -l

 

Post the results here. (You can cut-and-paste the results into a file stored on a USB flash drive or whatever.) This will tell us what you've got in the way of partition definitions.

[-†Krad†-]

Oh, sorry for not replaying. I got pretty busy with exams, etc. Anyways, I ended up findin the EASEUS free partition manager software, which has a partition recovery feature. This way, I was able to get all of my data from the laptop. Now I formatted, and managed to get a working triple boot by following acerrsomethingsomethings guide.

However, I did accidently update to 10.6.2, because I read posts saying it would work. However, the voodoohda causes a kernel panic, and I can't get the bcm43xx_enabler.sh script to enable my wireless. Do you know how to fix this? I am doing some research on it now, so I'll post anything new.