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Excuse the long post; just trying to be as clear as possible. Initially, I used bootcamp to install Windows 10 alongside Mac OS. During restart, it would automatically boot me into Mac OS and whenever I needed to boot into Windows, I used to hold the option key while starting and that gave me the option to boot into either Windows or continue with Mac OS.

After using it for a while, I decided to try out Ubuntu 20.04. So I partitioned my Mac OS Volume and installed Ubuntu manually. Even though I was successful, I realized that I could no longer boot into Windows anymore. Auto boot was changed to Ubuntu and if I held the option key during restart, I used to get an option for booting into Mac (working) and Windows (this too was not working).

Here is where I actually messed up. Today I decided to retain the unused Windows partition space and hence, booted into Mac OS and deleted the Windows partition using bootcamp and did a restart. Now I'm unable to log into Mac OS. Auto boot is still set to Ubuntu and no option is shown when using the option key.

I know that I can do a complete reinstall but just wanted to know if there is any way to regain my Mac OS boot option without a complete restore? Currently, Ubuntu is working fine.

TL;DR: Initially installed Windows 10 using bootcamp in Macbook pro. Decided to triple install Ubuntu. Succeeded but lost access to Windows partition. So decided to free that space with bootcamp and now lost access to Mac OS. Is there any chance to recover the boot option for Mac OS without complete restore?

Ubuntu boot Mac OS partition Ubuntu root Ubuntu swap Windows partition

boot-repair pastebin link

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  • @turivishal Thank you
    – Drazer
    Commented Jun 18, 2020 at 5:37
  • FFFFF... partition type is a common issue, see here: apple.stackexchange.com/q/266451/143445
    – At0micMutex
    Commented Jun 18, 2020 at 6:16
  • @At0mic Thank you very much. Your link was the very helpful and it was kind of starting point for me and finally I could retrieve my partition. However I'm gonna write an answer to my post as I had few extra issues and I believe someone might find it useful in future.
    – Drazer
    Commented Jun 20, 2020 at 7:13

1 Answer 1

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As mentioned by At0mic in the comments section, I started my search from that link and was able to successfully retrieve my partition.

The challenges the I had initially were

  1. My internal Wifi card was not working. I was using an external wifi card. Due to this, I couldn't use the internet recovery option. MAC was not recognising USB-ETHERNET cable either.

  2. I didn't have a bootable USB installer and no access to another MAC. This was a major challenge for me. Luckily after a lot of searching, I found a solution to create bootable USB on windows in another site.

The following are the links to the other questions that were helpful to me.

  1. Creating an OS-X bootable USB installer on Windows. Required files also included.
  2. Understanding your partition table and type of partition.
  3. Removing and recreating the corrupted volume and sometimes complete partition table (in case of bogus MBR)

Finally, I would like to thank At0mic for giving me a starting point and klanomath and David Anderson for sharing their invaluable knowledge to help out this community.

P.S: Please don't experiment with the partition tables without fully understanding them. The chances of losing your data are high. Also please go through the posts regarding triple boots, answered by klanomath and David Anderson.

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