Windows CDs not booting on MacBook Pro - grey screen

ok, i'm not an expert, but i've done about 50 bootcamp installs on 3 machines. i say this because windows 7 *** big time and i keep having to re-install to get various things to work on my friend's macbooks (i have an mbp and chose xp because it's just so much simpler).

anyway, i just now wiped out the bootcamp partition to start over, and a very similar thing happened. i thought it was quite strange, actually.

upon reboot into the windows install dvd, i got the gray screen also (for the first time). except i had the apple flashing intermittently with a circle and a slash through it. back in the old days, that was similar to the boot up volume being corrupted in mac os x.

anyway, what i think is going on is that it created a bootcamp partition, but there must be some error in the formatting and the computer is not recognizing it.

what you can do is restart the computer, hold down the alt/option key and wait until it gives you all the icons of the possible boot volumes.

probably it will show only the mac volume and the dvd install disc.

reboot from that, then start the windows install....but before you can do anything, you will have to format the boot camp partition using the windows installer utility.

i think that parallels and vmware fusion can access a bootcamp partition once it's already installed, but you can't install a virtual machine onto an unformatted partition, because a virtual machine i don't think is the same as a real partition, so you will have to do install it the traditional way onto the bootcamp partion (which you can't see or access because of the gray screen) and then set up the VM afterwards to access it afterwards.

see if that works. hope that makes sense.

sorry for the confusion, my brain is fried...been trying to solve my own bootcamp installs for a friend for the last 8 hours.

my understanding is that you get the gray screen AFTER the restart from Bootcamp Utility, right?

so, you never enter the windows installation. what you have to do is restart with "alt" key.

then choose the "windows" dvd...NOT the windows partition (you shouldn't see the partition yet because it hasn't been formatted or installed yet)....in any case, if you see the dvd option, choose that. you do this by moving the cursor to the little arrow below the icon, then click it...

it should reboot into the dvd now.

another way to do this is hold down the "C" key when you reboot the machine with the power button and it first comes on. it forces it to boot from the dvd/cd.

when i say "windows installer utility", it's just the wizard that starts automatically when you boot from the dvd. it's what supposed to automatically happen after bootcamp restarts, but you don't get there because of the gray screen.

i got a gray screen earlier today after a restart from bootcamp. but when i re-restarted again (as described above), and forced it to boot from the dvd, the windows installation begins.

i think it's a problem with bootcamp after multiple attempts at deleting and re-creating partitions. it's as if there are remnants of the old partition still on the drive and it's not "clean", so something happens. i can't explain it, but it happened to me.

let me know if that works for you.

wow, i'm not technical enough to know about BIOS or EFI...

it's strange that you can get the osx and CD options but can't boot into the cd.

are you sure it's frozen, are you clicking on the arrow below the icon and it just doesn't boot?

that would really be strange if your optical drive would recognize that there's a disc in there but not boot from it. assuming the drive works and the discs aren't damaged....

i wonder if it's something to do with your optical drive or a controller. you can't boot into it from "C", you can't boot into it from Alt/Option and choosing CD either...and it doesn't boot into the drive from Bootcamp..

that seems to be the common problem.

i wonder if there's a workaround by making a bootable disc image of your windows install dvd onto a USB drive for example...

yeah, i don't know about that. i'm trying to google it. i've made a bootable mac os x disc from a USB drive, and i know you can do it from other media such as SD cards and obviously firewire drives. in fact, i'm running triple boot on my computer (had to do some hacks...2 mac partitions and one windows).

i know that you can make a windows bootable usb drive, it's all over google. it would seem to me that you would need to do is make sure it's readable by the mac at startup. (you might be able to do it from within parallels if you have a VM installed).

http://www.google.com.ar/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=windowsbootable+usbdrive&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&ei=Fj5cTMjQKsP58Ab-35nbAg

another solution i saw in some other posts is just use an external cd/dvd drive and try and install windows from there, to bypass your internal optical drive. at least this way you will know if that's the problem or not.

sorry, what i meant was that i've made bootable usb drives from mac disc image, and supposedly you can do it with a windows image also.

the trick is getting the computer to recognize it when you boot up with alt/option. that i don't know what's required to make it happen.