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A reboot loop

I am stuck in a rebooting loop when trying to start XP in Boot Camp.

I have both BC and Parallels pointing to my XP installation, and both ways of starting windows have worked well. However, I never did succeed into upgrading BC 2.0 into 2.1. I tried both (within Bootcamp) through Apple Software Update and also did a manual download to disk of the upgrade. I then tried to upgrade to BC 2.1 from within Parallels. No luck there either.

Yesterday I started XP SP2 from Parallels and got a message that SP3 was released. I downloaded and installed and everything was dandy. However, when I try to start XP from Bootcamp I'm stuck in a repeatedly rebooting Macbook Pro.

I have uninstalled Boot Camp from my XP SP3 partition (chucked the Leopard DVD in the drive and uninstalled), then rebooted XP and did a new install of BC. I still get 2.0 installed, and there's no way I seem to be able to update BC to 2.1.

What can I do I get XP to boot in Boot Camp?

15" MBP 2.16, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on May 9, 2008 5:19 AM

17 replies

Jul 21, 2008 5:48 PM in response to secret-agent

I thought I'd share my experience.

I installed SP3 in Parallels a little while ago. I usually don't boot via Boot Camp, so I hadn't realised there was a problem until a few days ago.

My XP disc came with SP2, so I uninstalled SP3 while in Parallels to downgrade to SP2 - thinking I could do a 'repair' via my SP2 disc (I wasn't keen on preparing a slipstreamed SP3 disc - seemed like overkill).

Then I booted via Boot Camp. No error message (I thought - excellent!). I didn't do a 'repair' (because it was working). I reinstalled Boot Camp 2.0 via the Leopard DVD. I then installed the Boot Camp 2.1 update. I then installed SP3 via Windows Update, and then a few security patches. All fine.

I then booted into Mac OS, opened Parallels, did the 'delete Boot Camp' details under settings, and loaded XP. It loaded fine. Again, I thought 'excellent'.

Just to be doubly sure, I then reset and booted into XP via Boot Camp.

Disaster. Same bloody error message. I was so annoyed.

So I booted back into Mac OS, booted into XP via Parallels, and uninstalled SP3. This let me boot back into XP via Boot Camp.

I now refuse to install SP3. I'm not prepared to try the 'repair' (as described in the Parallels KB article) because (a) it might not work; and (b) I don't use XP that often and have wasted enough time on this already.

Jul 23, 2008 7:25 PM in response to secret-agent

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but a simpler solution would be just to reinstall Windows altogether from scratch.

That seems to be what Parallels "solution" is pretty much doing anyway, forcing us to pretty much reinstall Windows (a complicated Windows repair installation) because they won't create a real fix.

Since most of us hardly use Windows, why not just reinstall from scratch to make life easier?

A reboot loop