Black screen with flashing cursor after inserting Windows XP.

I just bought a brand new macbook from apple and I can't get XP or Vista to install under boot camp. I am having the flashing cursor and black screen just like everyone else on here. I really like my macbook, but this is the second one that i have had in 2 weeks. The first one, was shipped dead. Everything is working but boot camp. What is the deal with that? It does not appear to be any firmware updates for the newest 2.4 250MB black macbooks, so I'm pretty sure I have everything updated. I'm getting ready to just send this thing back to apple and forget about it. I have read many postings about this same problem. Why doesn't Apple have a solution?????????

Had the same issue... tried all the suggestions I could find from the internet... rebooted numerous times, restored, recreated the partition, repaired disk... nothing worked. Finally, on a whim, I copied the Gold OEM Windows XP CD to a new blank CD-R. Tried the install again with Boot Camp, worked like a charm. Maybe it's a coincidence, but I'd try it.

I have a brand new macbook. Same black screen/blinking cursor problem.
I'm using a Vista home premium disk direct from the retail packaging.
Parallels runs a vista install of the same disk with no problems.

I've tried removing the partition, running disk utility/verify, then recreating it again. Still doesn't work.

Just before the black screen comes up, there is a flash of blue, square shaped, like a 640x480 windows installer blue but it lasts about 1/10th of a second.

Anyone have an external monitor? Maybe the installer screen is showing up there.

I bought my macbook because of Apple's bootcamp ads. I don't mind problems like this coming up, but i'm shocked that apple has yet to post a fix.

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I had the same problem and it may have just been luck but I just turned off the computer when it was in that mode (Black Screen with Flashing Cursor), turned it back on with the XP CD still in the drive and Windows XP finished loading. I was able to finish the set-up steps with no troubles whatsoever & everything seems to be working great.

-Chris

I tried rebooting about 10 times. No luck.

Finally I pointed Parallels (free trial available) to my blank bootcamp partition and set parallels to boot from CD before HD. Parallels booted the Vista install CD just fine, and put Vista on my HD. Crashed at the end though and said it couldn't make the boot camp partition bootable so all changes were removed. Rebooted under boot camp and the installer came up fine off the CD.

So if you have this problem, and nobody else can help, and if you can find it, maybe you can download..... Parallels.

Feel free to post this on the other threads. Unlike other workarounds I'm guessing this will work for everyone and it only takes a free trial download of parallels to give it a try.

Still wish apple would acknowledge the problem and post a fix. Can't be that hard.

I think VMWare Fusion also supports vitualization with the bootcamp partition as the target so that may help you get around this install bug in boot camp(or the mac's firmware) too.

Simple solution - helped get me past the "black window before windows install"-problem.

Thany you.

Running vista premium installation as I type this on my new and shiny MacBook.

Simple solution. Once BootCamp creates the partition and you've gotten the black screen of death:

1. Force the computer to shut down by holding down the power button
2. Power back up and HOLD DOWN the "Option" key while the screen is still black
3. Select the Macintosh hard-drive and hit enter... this will boot you back into OS X
4. Go to "System Preferences"
5. Select "Startup Disks"
6. Select the Windows XP CD as the startup disk
7. You should then be able to hit a button that says "Restart", "Restart Now", or something like that
8. Windows XP will start to install

Did the original poster manage to sort the problem? I've just gone thru the process and I got to the exact same stage with the blinking cursor on a black screen. All I did to get thru was to restart and hold the ALT key down. Then select Windows as the operating system when I got the choice. Then Windows carried on installing.

Hope it helps.

I'd like to set up my MBP so that by default to boots into Leopard and if I want windows I can do the press ALT thing.

This worked for me at least:

I started bootcamp and installed the partition fine, but then when I inserted Windows the computer restarted, then there was a flash of something on the screen and then the dreaded flashing cursor and the computer hung.

What it seems to be is, that flash is when it's saying "press any key to boot from cd". So as soon as the computer restarts at that point, start tapping a key. Then it should install ok.

If you're stuck on the hanging screen, hold down the power button so the machine turns off. Press it again and hold down option until the dual boot screen appears. Choose the Windows CD and again immediately start tapping a key.

If this helps too - I've got a Macbook 2.0ghz with 1gb ram and it's straight out of the box, with no connection to the Internet (i.e. I haven't installed any updates or anything yet).

This is frustrating, since I recently sold my 2.33GHz MBP (ATI X1600) partly because of Apple's refusal to resolve the problem of WinXP being unusable (due to a blue shimmers & artifacting) when they released the EFI 1.4 Firmware update for that machine.

Hello,
I was thinking of installing XP on my MacBook Pro, with exactly the same specs as your old one. So can you confirm that I would just be wasting my time because of display problems? Thanks for your help.....BC

This worked for me as well. Now if only I could get past the missing hal.dll issue...

Have you tried formatting the partition that is created by Bootcamp. I would suggest formatting the partition using MS-Dos from the DiskUtility.
I had many of the same issues described in the previous posts. This seemed to be the workaround for me.

For my iMac the solution to this problem was to boot from the Windows CD by holding down the C key at startup with the Windows CD in the optical drive, after the new partition was created. Apparently Boot Camp does not invoke a "boot from CD" command when it restarts to initiate Windows install. Many of the XP install disks load a screen menu of install options unless you force a boot from CD at startup. If you do not have a bootable Windows CD you may be out of luck, since the newly created Boot Camp partition for Windows has no software to boot the disc. The first thing the Windows CD does when you boot from it is to load all the necessary drivers to enable reading of the CD and enables the display, keyboard, mouse etal. Nothing else worked for me until I held down the C key to force boot from CD.

For two nights straight I have tried every single solution that I have found on this forum and nothing has worked for me. I tried copying my Windows XP Home Edition on to a blank CD, nothing. I have tried unplugging the power, nothing. I have tried starting up the computer with the Windows XP CD, still nothing. I have partition and unpartition over and over again, still nothing. Someone please help me! -=(

Same problem here, on a 24" iMac I bought two weeks ago. Updated completely, no flaws with either of the two disks I've tried. Nothing suggested so far has been helpful.

If there are Apple employees who actually browse these forums, I hope you find it in your heart to at least say something about this matter, rather than responding to customer service requests with a copy/paste of your ineffectual troubleshooting guide.