Bootcamp partition not booting from disk selection screen at boot after installing Lion

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Bootcamp partition not booting from disk selection screen at boot after installing Lion

The title explains it really, after installing Lion I have been unable to boot into my Windows partition (Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, created several months ago) from the disk selection screen at boot, but have no problems just selecting my windows partition from Startup Disk in system preferences. When I hold alt while booting, the disk selection screen comes up like normal, but when I select my Windows partition and hit enter it just freezes.

I did some searching around but could not find anyone else with my specific problem. Does anyone know of a solution?

Mac mini, Windows 7

Posted on Jul 24, 2011 2:55 AM

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Answer 1

Drunark

Level 1

5 points

Jul 24, 2011 12:01 PM in response to wwwwaffle

I'm looking for a solution as well. I have a Mac Pro3,1 and upgrade to Lion and when I booted up Windows 7, I could see the initial screen, heard the welcome sound and ended up with a Black Screen. I remember with Leapod or Snow Leapord my MBP did this and it was just that the contrast was reset. For this I don't think that is the case, maybe the firmware to the video card is the issue...

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Answer 2

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Jul 24, 2011 12:16 PM in response to Drunark

How to Modify the BCD Store Using Bcdedit

Manage all partitions with Disk Utility in OS X

Check partition table health in Lion's Disk Utility

BCD for Windows 7 and Lion

The Recovery partition being added changed the # for Windows so it is higher and may even be unsupported partition number, though modifying the BCD has worked.

Clone your system.

Clean install Lion to another drive

Restore Lion or Snow Leopard

Seems to be the safest

And then if you want to use the Recovery mode you can attach and use the external drive with Lion.

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Answer 3

Feb 24, 2012 8:19 AM in response to wwwwaffle

I'm running Snow Leopard and Bootcamp 3.x, and I have this happen occasionally too, although I'm dual booting Linux not Windows. I have a Drobo (external RAID) attached by FireWire which takes a long time to start up, and I suspected that might be the cause. So these days I boot into OS X, wait for the Drobo to start, and then reboot into Linux. This seems to reduce the occurrence from maybe 1 in 4 to maybe 1 in 20 or better.

I just saw a post in an archived discussion where a user having this problem disconnects all FireWire external disks (and USB peripherals except keyboard) when booting into Windows, and that solved it for him.

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