Recently I was trying to install Windows on my Mac to run SolidWorks (yes, it's Windows Only). However, for some reason, Snow Leopard's bootcamp assistant refused to create a partition for me. It kept saying:
However, after trying several different things I was finally able to get Snow Leopard to partition the hard drive so that I could get Windows 7 to work. I'm not sure what worked, but I'm pretty sure that others are likely to have similar problems, which is why I took the time to write this post.
Step 2: Behold the power of
So after restarting into OS X, BootCamp assistant still didn't want to partition my hard drive so I tried fsck (a command-line utility to repair disks) to repair my disk drive which ultimately did the job!
If you want to read more about fsck and how to use it, you can try Apple's help page or just follow my (foot)steps. Here's what I did:
Happy camping!
The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.I had created a Bootcamp partition once before with Leopard so I was puzzled when something Mac wasn't working! (Okay, no, Apple's computers are just as fallible as other computers). And there was no was I was going to go through formating the hard drive again, installing Windows would take long enough!
Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again.
However, after trying several different things I was finally able to get Snow Leopard to partition the hard drive so that I could get Windows 7 to work. I'm not sure what worked, but I'm pretty sure that others are likely to have similar problems, which is why I took the time to write this post.
Step 1: Verify and Repair thy hard drive
First I put in my Snow Leopard DVD (this should also work for Tiger and Leopard) and pressed C on my Mac after restarting the computer to boot from my Snow Leopard DVD. After choosing English as my language:- I clicked Utitilities in the menubar
- Clicked Disk Utility
- Selected my hard drive (Macintosh HD) in the drives list on the left hand side
- Clicked on the First Aid tab and clicked Verify Disk
- After it verified my disk I clicked Repair Disk
Step 2: Behold the power of fsck!
So after restarting into OS X, BootCamp assistant still didn't want to partition my hard drive so I tried fsck (a command-line utility to repair disks) to repair my disk drive which ultimately did the job!If you want to read more about fsck and how to use it, you can try Apple's help page or just follow my (foot)steps. Here's what I did:
- Restart the computer, and while it's restarting (before you get the Apple logo boot screen!) hold down "Command (or the Apple Key) and S" together to start up your computer in "single user mode"
- Don't worry about the black text, you're computer is still ok
- When OS X gives you a cursor and asks you what to do next, type in:
/sbin/fsck -fy - Press enter
- OS X will do its thing and tell you after it's done
- Type in
reboot - Press enter
- Your computer will restart into OS X the normal way
Happy camping!
