osx - rEFIt gives me a "Boot Legacy OS from HD" option when I have only Max OS X after erasing my Boot Camp partition

04
2013-08
  • pattern86

    I used the Boot Camp Assistant app on Mac OS 10.6.4 to create another partition. Then I erased the partition with Disk Utility instead of using Boot Camp Assistant to erase it.

    Now rEFIt gives me the option to boot Max OS X, but also an option to "Boot Legacy OS from HD". What is it referring to?

    My computer has only one physical drive and is setup the default way when doing a fresh install of Snow Leopard.

    /dev/disk0

    /dev/disk0 -- GUID_partition_scheme
    /dev/disk0s1 -- EFI
    /dev/disk0s2 -- Apple_HFS Macintosh HD

    After removing the Boot Camp partition with Disk Utility, I thought that it might not have removed some sort of boot info from the drive because I didn't use Boot Camp Assistant, so I used Boot Camp Assistant again to recreate a partition and then used it to remove the partition.

    I blessed Mac OS X and rebooted and then re-blessed rEFIt.

    Still no dice. Any idea as to a solution? If I do a backup and then reformat, will the problem still exist because of a file that I restore afterwards? I don't want to do that just to see if it will work--I'd rather know via some existing documentation before taking that step.

    Thanks in advance.

  • Answers
  • Michael Ishigaki

    Warning: Please be sure you have a good idea of what exactly is happening before following any advice that I write here. This may be risky! Please do a bit more Googling before pressing ENTER on a Linux terminal. :)

    I had this same problem after I removed a partition containing Windows 7 using Disk Utility. The problem in my case was that the Windows 7 partition was removed, but the Windows boot loader installed on the Master Boot Record (often denoted MBR) remained. To remove it, use dd as in the example below.

    EXAMPLE: If your Windows boot loader is installed on the MBR of your sda drive, from a Linux terminal run: (WARNING, DON'T BLINDLY TYPE THIS WITHOUT READING THE DESCRIPTION ABOVE:) sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=440 count=1

    The dd command is also helpful if you have an extra GRUB boot loader installed somewhere. For example, I mistakenly installed a GRUB boot loader on my second hard drive both in the second hard drive's MBR and in the second hard drive's first partition. rEFIt listed both of the boot loaders, even though only the one installed on the second hard drive's MBR worked. So to remove the extra GRUB boot loader on the first partition of the second drive I also used dd as below.

    EXAMPLE 2: If you have an extra GRUB boot loader installed on a partition, in this example partition sdb1, from a Linux terminal run dd as in the example below. (Notice the "of=..." changed and the "bs=..." changed from the first example.) (WARNING, DON'T BLINDLY TYPE THIS WITHOUT READING THE DESCRIPTION ABOVE:) sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1 bs=446 count=1

    I know this is an old question, but it was never really answered. I hope this helps many people who were led to this page while searching for this problem. God bless!

  • churnd

    If you're only using OS X, just remove rEFIt and re-bless the OS X boot disk. If you still want to use rEFIt for some reason, just reinstall it.

  • pattern86

    I had not received an answer yet so I just took the dive and:

    1. Used Time Machine to backup my Mac to an external firewire HDD
    2. Booted from the OS X install disc and reformatted my internal HDD as a single HFS+ volume
    3. Restored my OS from the Time Machine backup
    4. Re-blessed rEFIt

    Now it only shows the option for Mac OS X. I think the problem came from partitioning the drive with Boot Camp Assistant and then removing the partition with Disk Utility instead of Boot Camp Assistant.


  • Related Question

    osx - Can I remove a Boot Camp partition from my MacBook?
  • Greg Hewgill

    A couple of years ago, I installed the Boot Camp beta on OS X, reserved 20 GB for Windows XP, and installed an XP in that partition. Since then, the Boot Camp beta expired and I used Parallels to run the XP in a VM from that partition. Now I want that 20 GB back.

    I'm not terribly worried about the contents of the XP installation on that partition (I can just back up the data elsewhere), but if I can preserve it in a VM that would be a bonus. I would like to remove that partition and resize the OS X partition to occupy the full drive.

    What's the proper way to do this?


  • Related Answers
  • Diago

    Run the Boot Camp assistant and it will automatically start the removal process after some prompts.

    You will need to use something like VMWare Converter to create a VM first if you want to keep the Windows Installation. You can then convert this to a Parallels VM.

  • Jasarien

    You can use the Bootcamp Assistant (found in /Applications/Utilities) to restore your drive back to one partition.

  • Damien

    Important thing to consider here is that there is a bug with Bootcamp that typically means that after you have removed a partition it has a hard time being able to do a new one and requires a fresh install of OSX should you ever wish to readd it at a later date!

  • Lance

    Open Disk Utility. Select the Windows partition. Choose the "Erase" tab. Change the format to "Mac OS Extended (journaled)". Click the "Erase" button. Wait. When it is done, choose the "Partition" tab. Move the dividing line to the end (probably will be the bottom) of the graph. Click to apply.