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Level 1

60 points

Boot camp often fails to boot - fix?

Boot Camp often fails to boot at all, leaving the iMac dead at the bootloader screen. Have to force shutdown by holding down power button. Full hardware test declared the hardware 100% functional. Disk Utility and chkdsk sees nothing but fire. This is intermitent/random and it proved impossible to "force" it's occurance. It happen when it darn well please?

First occurance goes back to late July 2011, a few days after a major thunder storm that caused pulsing power blackouts (as in, very short bursts - like turning off the power then immediately flipping it back on - too quick to actually shut the computer down). Surely, this must be the source of the issue? Right? Alas it doesn't adds up. Power supply of this house is very stable and reliable. Power fluctuations are unhearded of. It's also connected to a surge protected outlet. The system itself, in Mac or Win, is flat out stable. It does not freeze out of the blue like what a damaged power supply would cause. It only ever freeze upon choosing a partition via the boot camp interface.

Further observation as compared to normal boot procedure: Upon selection of the Windows partition, the LED on the USB mouse turns off then back on again a short moment later. Windows loads up normally. When the crash occurs, the LED never turn back on. It's just dead right there and then.

What's going on and what can I do to fix this? It feels like some hardware initialisation fails for some reasons. It's ough to be around the USB systems itself but what do I know anyway?

P.S.: Please, don't mention the dreaded format and re-install. It's a 20 hours job. I'm not going there. ty 😝

Message was edited by: Virgule - changed a "foul" word

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), i7, 8GB

Posted on Feb 27, 2012 3:27 AM

Best reply

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Posted on Feb 27, 2012 3:52 AM

Why not upgrade the surge protector to a UPS? good units are very affordable.

Put all your sensitive equipment like modem/router, computer, electronics running off UPS.

CyberPower SINE 1000VA/600W $137

http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP1000PFCLCD-1000VA-600W-Compatible/dp/B00429N1 92/

Well, sometimes if you don't have backups, and refuse to do what you may need to....

There are troubleshoolting tips and faqs I'm sure on the 'net.

Starting with Windows 7 DVD for one

Even OS X won't survive with forced (hard) shutdowns.

If it only happens in Windows, and you were running OS X when the outage occurred...

USB devices and cables can be hard to ID but swapping cables and stuff helps.

As for Disk Utility, it does not look at drive sectors or files for issues.

If you really want to scan a hard drive, use the vendor's own Linux or Windows utiilty to recertify the sectors.

If you haven't done any deep cleaning of files, registry, even uninstall and reinstall components.

I just did a reinstall. Partially to be a test run for when I have to install Windows 8 next week, also to clear up a problem I had, possibly a rogue web site using a rootkit to hide files and icons and programs disappeared and icons became generic. So yes I don't take it lightly, but the new install runs much much better (over two years since last install).

AHT is not a 100% reliable at finding everything, only what it actually is designed or suppose to look for.

A semi-loose DIMM or faulty can be enough, and not likely AHT or Memtest will find it, but Windows does tend to spot a problem with RAM during installs.

CCleaner 3.x

Driver Sweeper 3.x

START: run %TEMP% - Select All and send to Recycle

Lion Recovery - show all hidden partitions and check health of all, hidden debug menu in Disk Utility can be enabled in command line

Some partitions (GPT, EFI, System, Volume Information Block) are only tested during format where each sector does get a thorough check for errors because they can't be mapped out later. When you do chkdsk etc you only test user partition areas and not the 'entire' drive, unless doing a full initialization. And GPT requires that the VIB and also the backup VIB both be error free - in the past the backup VIB if it failed was "optional" though, it is not now.

If you clone OS X then it is easy to move it to another drive and also to do full initialization and restore. If 3 days of your time isn't an option maybe time to invest in program(s) and methods that can backup and restore.

Trying to find the needle in haystack that you have limped along with I guess since July (since installing Lion? maybe ?) can take 3 days probably, unless you are lucky enough to replace a mouse or cable on first step and it all goes away (hit the lottery or get hit by lightning odds)

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19 replies

vanclute

Level 1

39 points

Jul 21, 2012 7:17 PM in response to The hatter

My hub is powered, and except for the sporadic (2 to 3 times a week) momentary notices that it's lost power when it hasn't, there hasn't been any isue with it. Before I even had this UPS, the hub would go offline like this and all devices connected to it would lose their minds briefly (and that was on a Windows box), so I'm fairly confident in this case it's just a crappy hub. I probably paid under $10 for it 5 years ago or more. I expect the UPS will have no problem when connected to a decent, modern hub.

Jul 23, 2012 7:55 AM in response to Virgule

There's no such thing as a Boot Camp boot loader. This sounds like a firmware bug, either in EFI, which prevents the CSM-BIOS from loading; or a CSM-BIOS bug that hangs upon seeing an external disk with only an HFS+ partition on it.

radlemur

Level 1

1 points

Mar 8, 2014 7:41 PM in response to vanclute

Hey vanclute,

I'm having the same issue and I narrowed it down to a usb hub as well. However, I tried with 3 different hubs and still the same issue...did you figure this out eventually?

Thanks!

vanclute

Level 1

39 points

Mar 8, 2014 8:23 PM in response to radlemur

Frankly I don't know, as I abandoned the entire idea of booting into Windows directly. Instead I use Parallels to run any Windows apps, and a dedicated real Windows box as my gaming machine. Even once Bootcamp booted, I found too many games would not perform well on the Mac hardware so... I gave up on the idea.

Boot camp often fails to boot - fix?