What if Boot Camp Assistant says Unable to read the Windows partition?

macos tips
1

Hey, When I try to use Boot Camp Assistant to remove my bootcamp partition, I get the following error:

Unable to read the Windows partition
Boot Camp Assistant was unable to verify if the Windows partition contains a Windows installation. This may be because BitLocker is enabled on the partition. If so, disable BitLocker on the disk before removing Boot Camp.

I’d be so grateful if someone could assist me!

2

The reason for the “Unable to read the Windows partition” is probably that the old Windows installation wasn’t properly uninstalled. Then, you can try the following commands to completely erase the Boot Camp partition:

  1. Open Terminal via Spotlight.
  2. Run the command diskutil list internal
  3. Note down the identifier of the “Windows Recovery” partition.
  4. Run the command diskutil eraseVolume free free disk0s3 to remove the encryption of this partition (e.g., the disk identifier is disk0s3.).
  5. Retry Boot Camp Assistant.