Lost ability to boot into recovery and bootcamp after resizing partition

Question

My computer is running High Sierra. I was planning to reclaim the free space in Macintosh HD and allocate it to Bootcamp. As I did this in Disk Utility, computer partition scheme was changed to AFPS and now I can only boot into apple, the multiboot option is gone. I ran the diskutil list command and this is my output.

bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         148.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data FreeSpace               42.5 GB    disk0s3
   4:                 Apple_Boot                         134.2 MB   disk0s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                60.1 GB    disk0s5

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +148.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            88.5 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 20.0 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                517.7 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      3.2 GB     disk1s4

bash-3.2# 

Additional output from commands:

Macintosh-3:~ xxx$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Password:
fdisk: /dev/disk0: Operation not permitted
Macintosh-3:~ xxx$ sudo -s 
bash-3.2# fdisk /dev/disk0
fdisk: /dev/disk0: Operation not permitted
bash-3.2# ls -d /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/Boot /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/Boot
bash-3.2# exit
exit 
Macintosh-3:~ xxx$ ls -d /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/Boot /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/Boot
Macintosh-3:~ xxx$ 

I need help to getting back my multi boot and fix the partition. Thanks a bunch.

Answer 1

When using APFS, the built-in macOS Recovery volume no long appears when the Startup Manager is invoked. You should be able to boot the the this volume by holding down the ⌘ (Command)+R key at startup or restart.

If you can not boot to the built-in macOS Recovery, reinstalling macOS may solve this problem. This website has a link that will take you to the High Sierra download in the Apps Store. You should be able to keep all your old files and Applications.

If you still want to boot the built-in macOS Recovery volume from the Startup Manager, then you will need to install a third party boot manager. I have the rEFInd Boot Manager installed on my iMac. Basically, I first boot to the Startup Manager, then to rEFInd and finally to the built-in macOS Recovery volume.

If your Windows files are intact, your problem with Windows could be solved by reinstalling the boot code. The procedure for doing so is given here.

Note: I have assumed you did not upgrade to Windows 10 from a previous version of Windows that use the legacy BIOS boot method. For example, upgrading from Windows 7. I base this assumption on the lack of a Boot folder in the root of your BOOTCAMP volume.

I should also mention that the 134.2 MB Apple_Boot partition is unnecessary. With the introduction of APFS, Apple has incorporated everything needed to use the macOS operating system into a single partition per drive. This greatly simplifies the process of adding, deleting and resizing APFS volumes. This physical 134.2 MB Apple_Boot partition has been replaced by the synthesized APFS volume named "Recovery".