My Windows 7 Boot Camp partition is missing. Why doesn't Parallels recognize it?

I installed Windows 7 on my (month-old) Macbook Pro using boot camp assistant. I basically used defaults throughout, so I don't think there's anything crazy about my setup.

Usually, after doing this, I would be able to see the Windows 7 partition mounted by OS X, but this time it's missing. The option to use my Boot Camp install is grayed out in Parallels, I assume because it doesn't see the Windows 7 volume (since it's missing.)

I am able to boot into both Windows 7 and OS X and use both of them fine. Windows 7 sees the OS X partition.

I can't seem to find any information about this problem, except some whisperings on some forum, which seemed to suggest that my GPT partition map was out of sync with my MBR partition map. Unfortunately, I can't find that forum post again. This might be a red herring!

I tried doing a Disk Repair in OS X disk utility, but it just tells me it couldn't repair it, and that I should backup everything and reformat (it says that something is broken.) Is there a better way? I am comfortable with commandline tools and doing insane things with partitions, especially if the alternative is to start all over again.

Here is the output of doing sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  708837376] HFS+        
*3: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 709249024 -     204800] HPFS/QNX/AUX
 4: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 709453824 -  267317248] HPFS/QNX/AUX

Man, I'm sorry I totally haven't had time to look into this and respond to the many people trying to help me. I will probably have some time over the coming holidays.

Solution 1:

Try the fdisk option that repairs the MBR? -u I think.