Hi all, I run a copy of Win8 in a Bootcamp partition with Parallels 8 on my Macbook Pro and deleted the Windows.old folder manually in Finder through Mac OSX (Mountain Lion) rather than through the disk cleanup and now Win8 wont startup. I now get stuck in the Auto Repair and none of the Advanced features seem to work. I originally installed via a Win8 upgrade bootable USB and that isn't being recognised by the Auto Repair when i try to restore. I don't mind losing the data in the partition (i only use it to run a Windows program needed for work), but the issue here is that i don't have an original Win7 image anywhere to reinstall - only the Win8 Upgrade bootable USB thumb. Is there any way i can fix this without having to find a full image of either Win7 or Win8 and reinstalling from scratch? Is it failing to boot up because for some reason things were still pointing to the Windows.old folder? I read on other Windows forums that deleting the Windows.old folder should not cause any problems? Also, maybe related - the files in the OSX trash were not all emptyable. For some reason there are some files there that won't empty no matter what i do - and if i Get Info seems they are actually located in /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/.Trashes rather than ./Trash for some reason? If i eject the Bootcamp partition the files dont appear in Trash anymore. What have i done? Please help.
In a normal situation you wouldn't be able to delete a Windows folder in OS X. In OS X Windows partitions are read-only. Unless you have installed a 3rd party NTFS driver. What might have happened: * You deleted more than just Window.old * The 3rd party NTFS driver messed up the Windows partition What you should've done: * Delete NTFS entities only via Windows. What can you do: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/a/clean-install-windows-8-upgrade.htm
Hi Specimen, Yes i have tuxera NTFS installed on OSX so that is probably what happened there. I've managed to get into Auto Repair - Advanced Options and run a chkdsk /r from Command Prompt which seems to have fixed my issues. Boots up OK now. Thanks for your help, i'll be wary deleting anything on the Windows Partition from within OSX now.
