Windows10 - Bootcamp Could not locate the macOS boot volume - mac partition unknown
Solution 1
You can still boot the macOS partition right? You can hold down Alt/Option upon startup and it will give you a list of bootable volumes. Choose Macintosh HD (or your macOS partition) to boot it. Once you're done, you may wish to change the default boot to macOS in System Preferences -> Startup Disk. To boot your Windows partition again, hold Alt/Option upon startup and choose BOOTCAMP (your Windows partition).
If you have any other Bootcamp questions, let me know. Cheers
Solution 2
According to Apple, you are not suppose to use the APFS with the Boot Camp Assistant application. However, if you do so, then the following will fix the problem you are having.
Since the Windows Boot Camp software can detect bootable "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" volumes, the follow instructions create such a volume. Instead of placing macOS in the volume, a third party boot manager, called rEFInd, will be substituted. This boot manager will then be configured to silently boot the macOS stored in the APFS container. Finally, macOS will be instructed to not automatically mount this new volume at startup.
Below are the steps. The commands need to be entered into a Terminal application window.
Note: You will have to replace "Macintosh HD" with the the name of your macOS volume.
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Create the new volume. The
diskutil
command, shown below, shrinks the APFS container by 300 MB and creates the new 200 MB "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" volume labeled "Macintosh HD via rEFInd".sudo diskutil ap resizeContainer disk1 223600M JHFS+ "Macintosh HD via rEFInd" 200M
After the command completes, restart the Mac.
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Download the rEFInd Boot Manager software from this SourceForge web site. Enter the following commands to install the software to the "Macintosh HD via rEFInd" volume.
cd ~/Downloads/refind-bin-0.11.2 ./refind-install --ownhfs /dev/disk0s3
Note: The error message
Could not set boot device property: 0xe00002bc
was expected and can be ignored. -
Configure the TextEdit application. Open TextEdit, then navigate to the "Preferences..." window. Uncheck all the "Options", as shown below. When finished, quit TextEdit.
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Use the command below to navigate to the folder containing the
refind.conf
file.cd "/Volumes/Macintosh HD via rEFInd/System/Library/CoreServices"
Make a backup copy of this file.
sudo cp refind.conf refind.conf.orignal
Add write permissions to the
CoreServices
folder and therefind.conf
file.sudo chmod a+w . refind.conf
Open the file in the TextEdit application.
open -e refind.conf
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Add the following lines to the end of the
refind.conf
file. You should be able to just cut and paste these lines. When finished, save the changes, then quit TextEdit.# # Added to make rEFInd silent. # menuentry "Macintosh HD via rEFInd" { icon \System\Library\CoreServices\icons\os_mac.png volume "Macintosh HD" loader \System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi ostype MacOS graphics on } timeout -1 hideui all scanfor manual
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Enter the following commands to modify the
/etc/fstab
file. This entry will instruct macOS not to mount the volume labeled "Macintosh HD via rEFInd" at startup.Note: The character sequence
\040
is just the octal representation of the space character.sudo bash echo >>/etc/fstab echo "LABEL=Macintosh\040HD\040via\040rEFInd none hfs rw,noauto" >>/etc/fstab exit
Note: The correct way, to edit the
/etc/fstab
file, is to use the commandsudo vifs
. Using theecho
command is just a quick shortcut.When finished, restart the Mac.
Now when choosing Boot Camp from the Control Panel, you should get something similar to what is shown below.
Solution 3
This is because of High Sierra's new APFS (Apple File System) on Apple PCIe-based solid state drives, as well as 2.5" solid state drives on older Macs such as a 2012, like the one I have.
Windows 10 Boot Camp control panel doesn't recognize that file system yet, so you have to reboot and hold down the Option key to toggle which one you want to boot into.
If you set your Mac as the startup disk on the Mac side of things and simply reboot Windows, it will always boot back into Mac OS. Then if you want to go to Windows, just reboot the Mac Parson and hold the option key down and select Windows to get back into Windows.
When you're done in Windows, you won't have to hold the option key again since you've already selected Mac as the default startup disk on the Mac, and so just say Start Menu->Power->Restart, and it will boot into Mac automatically.
Mahender
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Mahender over 1 year
In my Macbook pro (2016 touch bar), previously I installed Windows 10 and upgraded to creators version. In Windows session, in the bootcamp "Restart in macOS..." option is returning "Could not locate the macOS boot volume." error.
When I ran the gdisk tool (based on this thread answer) to list the partition details, I see my mac partition (#2) has FFFF code (seems to be unknown)
c:\Temp>gdisk64.exe GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3 Type device filename, or press <Enter> to exit: 0: Partition table scan: MBR: protective BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT. Command (? for help): p Disk 0:: 122138133 sectors, 465.9 GiB Sector size (logical): 4096 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): 67089514-C692-4DF1-8679-633BDE4D77E6 Partition table holds up to 128 entries Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 5 First usable sector is 6, last usable sector is 122138127 Partitions will be aligned on 2-sector boundaries Total free space is 2112456 sectors (8.1 GiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 6 76805 300.0 MiB EF00 EFI System Partition 2 76806 58758145 223.9 GiB FFFF NoName 3 60870144 121919301 232.9 GiB 0700 BOOTCAMP 4 121919488 122137855 853.0 MiB 2700
Any help to boot into macOS?