Boot Camp suddenly refuses to boot

I have the same problem and have seen it pop up here and there. I have an iMac (Early '08) and it is really screwed up. I can not get it to start up...period. No selecting start up disks, no verbose, nothing. Any startup disks spin for about 15 min and either eject or jump back to to the flashing ? system folder.

However I did get the OS install CD to boot up once but it did not show any hard drive as if it had vanished and now I can't get it back and I am really, really screwed. I have a Time Machine backup so it isn't a big deal, but now I can't use the computer.

It is worth noting that the problem seems to come after the 10.5.6 update as I have noticed some of the other people list that as their OS.

Same problem here. I have used Boot Camp successfully for over a year. I have it on both my Macbook Pro and iMac. However, a few nights ago I tried to reboot and got a blank white screen and nothing more. I could engage the power button again and boot to Mac. I then made the mistake last night of going into System Preferences and telling it to reboot to the Windows HD. Mistake! Now I can't get to the Mac OS. I have not tried any disc yet. Any help?

Hold down the Option key while it is booting (needs to be held down before the "chime"). You should see icons of the Mac OSX disk and the Windows disk. Use the arrow keys to highlight the Mac OSX disk and hit return.

Thanks for your reply, but with all due respect, you failed to read my prior post. I have used Boot Camp for over a year, so I know how to use it (i.e. hold the option key). At this point, the screen remains white without the icons of the hard drives showing up. I can hold the option key all day to no avail.

I will throw my 2 cents back in the ring.

I ended up taking it into the Apple Store and had them run a complete surface scan of the drive and it all checked out. There were also no SMART errors which would also point to a hardware problem.

With the exception of the thin keyboard fix, I am willing to bet that it is a software conflict. Even the genius in the store was having the same problem. He was still in the process of figuring out which drive was causing the problem but the first thing we thought of was the new WoW 3.0.8 patch might have something to do with it. If you don't play WoW then it is not that then.

So far it sounds like it is going to be a trial and error problem. For those of you having the problem does it happen first thing when you boot up in the morning or does it present itself all the time no matter how long you keep the computer off or if you reset the PRAM?

a couple thoughts....

you can't scan the partition tables, taking it in and letting Apple? when you have better tools from the vendor for your specific hard drive; you can also schedule a chkdsk to check for errors and fix bad sectors.

Definitely want to run system file checker *sfc /scannow*

Studies have shown SMART at best tells you it is failing, not much use or help.

Boot Camp doesn't do any of the booting, Mac EFI takes control first before turning it over to Windows. Boot Camp Assistant adds MBR support, Boot Camp services and drivers add hardware layer support to Windows as well as OSSwitcher and Apple TimeServices, keyboard etc.

Since my problem started, it is consistently broke. My biggest mistake was telling System Preference in the MacOS to boot directly to Windows. Now I can't get to the MacOS at all. Before, it would boot to Mac. Even after trying to get to Windows via Boot Camp, I could turn the computer off and then let it boot to Mac.

How do I reset the PRAM in this instance?

Is there a way I can have Time Machine get me restored without reinstalling the OS?

Hatter,

Thanks for the input, however I have an Apple Store literally 5 min from my house and I personally know the tech there so it wasn't a big deal.

As for getting a utility from the vendor, that is not exactly a common knowledge thing so I am not sure how I was to pick up on that. I will download and try something with that once I get the computer back but I didn't know the manufactures of whatever drive Apple put in had a utility you could download. Could you give me an example link or something that would point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.

- J

You can find the drive make, model, firmware revision easily enough in OS X's System Profile.

In Windows, Device Manager, Disk drives, open the tab and you will see the raw model name and revision.

WD has Lifeguard (XP only, not supported in Vita x64 and Win7 that I use, may work in Vista x32).

Seagate has their own Seatools but given the problems they have had recently and for years with their firmware....

And maybe it is a hidden secret, but I use to hang around place like
http://www.storagereview.com
as well as the need to test and diagnose drives and setup RAIDs that I can be sure run at their best.

I've had a drive that no amount of OS X tools (and I have half a dozen good commercial tools) worked on a bum WD drive but WD Dignostic did the trick. Same for Maxtor when there was a problem with their DM10 and Macs - and that drive, and MLIII were excellent drives in their day, after years of unreliable and poor sales, customer fear and skepticism forced them into being acquired unfortunately into the Seagate family).

If you know the people, that counts for more than anything, and doesn't hurt it is so darn close! Oftentimes it is just easier to RMA, even if the drive isn't at fault (a lot of drives just have to be reformatted and have bad file system or at worse a bad block).

Erasing a drive, even a "zero all" is not always able to find and remove or repair/fix those bad sectors, at least not from what I saw with OS X Disk Utility.

Using chkdsk - most Windows users do know, but it has had a bad rep (for good reason) but latest iteration of NTFS I do trust, even more so than HFS+ for now.

In fact, one of the original reasons for putting Windows on my Mac was just to be able to update drive firmware and do other tests.

Hatter,

Good stuff!

I have not used windows since 3.1 and DOS 6.22 so I am learning the ropes. I am currently on XP Home SP3 and basically use it for Steam and other games so I am not too familiar with all the ins and outs of the system.

I didn't even think of doing a drive scan within windows and the UNIX core scares me in OS X since I grew up with OS 7 - 9 and never had the time to learn the innards of OS X. 🙂

If all else fails I will get the drive RMA'd and build it back up from scratch and figure out where the error starts at.

Like you, I barely used Windows, a tab of CP/M, had to learn Wordstar at one point, but forced myself to get a handle on - and feel for - OS X (so I could tread water). Bought books along the way, and now have forced myself to read and use Vista and Windows 7 so I could feel comfortable and know my way around.

There are some excellent articles online on troubleshooting; Amazon is where I go for books usually along with O'Reilly.

MicroMat TechTool Pro (5.0 I think currently) was good for finding a bad or weak sector, but then doesn't give users a way to map it out. Use to use a program that you had to manually enter the bad sector address, then the spare to use. Amazing that now 35 yrs later, with 1000x as many blocks and TB of storage, a person would have to scan an entire drive. (Speedtools looks great, and you can narrow in on a sector, but didn't spot the error TechTool Pro found). Memory can also have 'weak' addresses and also hard to test for, and there are systems that can even "rope off" a bad address on-the-fly and spot flipped bits and full byte or dual-byte errors.

I've gotten bitten more than once by Internet Security Suites that are good, but any of them are capable of breaking as a result of a live update gone bad or where the cure (running anti-malware all the time) had an impact. Norton has gotten good (thought I'd never say that) and has some settings to help gamers. An upcoming product is targeted at the needs of gamers: to look for things that might hurt performance, but still protect, and the unique threads and needs.

My next system purchase may be my first full "do it yourself" hobby enthusiast and extreme performance. Free at last to build what I want. Just waiting to save and for Intel to have more mature Core i7 parts.

I put my MacOS X install disk as well as the Leopard CPU drop-in disk. The computer made noises like it was reading them but then would try to eject them, pull them back in, and continue to spin them. I can't find my XP disks right now to see if that's what it's looking for.

I have exactly the same problem. Was working fine, haven't used for some time and then just froze on the screen where you select which drive to boot on.

Anyone have a solution????

EXACTLY the same thing happened to me yesterday. I desperately need to access some files on Windows. Does anyone have a solution? It just hangs when I try to choose which OS to boot. After about 10 minutes it defaults back to OSX.