# Recovery from a failed Mac Boot Camp install **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 27, 2013, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovery-from-a-failed-mac-boot-camp-install/674928 "2013-11-27T17:02:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovery-from-a-failed-mac-boot-camp-install/674928/1 "2013-11-27T17:02:08Z")
Paging MacTech and any other OS X gurus… My old (2006-vintage) iMac seems to be bricked. Rather than digging up a suitably old copy of Parallels to run Windows XP on this Mac, I decided to use the Boot Camp Assistant. The Windows install seemed to be going well until I put in an incorrect product key, and the install aborted. So much for re-purposing the old Mac to use as a Windows box… Now, it’s caught in some sort of temporal causality loop. When I turn it on, there’s no startup chime, no happy mac, no sad mac, no apple logo. Just a gray screen. The only thing I can get it to do now is boot from a Windows installer disc, and the process grinds along until it decides it’s had enough and hangs somewhere in the unpacking files process. Time for some deep-level rescue work, I think. Would I be able to extract the drive from the Mac, plug it into an external enclosure on another Mac, then use Disk Utility to kil the would-be Windows partition and make the drive bootable again? Or, ignore the Windows partition and bless the drive? Or do I need to just pull off the files I want to keep, then nuke and pave? All of these are a pain, since it is an iMac, and getting at the drive is quite a task. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovery-from-a-failed-mac-boot-camp-install/674928/2 "2013-11-27T17:13:00Z")
Have you tried safe mode booting or single user mode or any of the special start up key combos? Just wondering what you’ve ready tried. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovery-from-a-failed-mac-boot-camp-install/674928/3 "2013-11-27T17:26:18Z")
Try booting with the option key held down. This should let you select a bootable partition. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovery-from-a-failed-mac-boot-camp-install/674928/4 "2013-11-27T17:59:22Z")
No boot options work. It just soldiers on and tries to unsuccessfully install Windows if the CD is in the drive. If there’s no Windows CD, it dies with a DOS style black screen and “No bootable device – insert boot disk and press any key” Speaking of the optical drive - the only way I was able to get the Windows disc out was to wedge the disc via the loading slot, and after 10-15 seconds, the drive gave up and ejected the disc. I miss the days of being able to use a paper clip, and holding the mouse button on startup does not eject it. Putting in an OS X disc and rebooting gives the same “No bootable device” error. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovery-from-a-failed-mac-boot-camp-install/674928/5 "2013-11-27T18:32:47Z")
Do you have another machine that you can use to run Disk Warrior on the dead iMac, using FireWire target mode? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovery-from-a-failed-mac-boot-camp-install/674928/6 "2013-11-27T19:24:17Z")
Hmm…stupid question, and probably won’t help anyway, but is this a wireless keyboard or a wired one? I’ve often had issues with wireless keyboards (and I use the Apple ones) recognize startup key combos on booting and have to plug in a wired USB keyboard to get it to work. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2013, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovery-from-a-failed-mac-boot-camp-install/674928/7 "2013-11-28T00:23:39Z")
It’s a wired Apple keyboard, and just to be sure I didn’t have a dead Option key, I tried another Apple keyboard. I found a huge (61 pages) thread about this at the Apple support forum, and it appears to be a kink relatively common to the early Intel iMacs. The short version: the drive is trashed. If I’m lucky, I can put it in an external enclosure to rescue files, but the boot table may be hopelessly munged. Drives are cheap now, so it’s cost-effective to dump the drive than to try and rebuild the MBR. Boo.