Macbook Air Boot Camp Windows 8 CP install; black screen crash after restart

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Level 1

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Macbook Air Boot Camp Windows 8 CP install; black screen crash after restart

Over the weekend I installed Windows 8 CP on my macbook air. I messed around in the Metro stuff for a bit, then installed the Boot Camp supplied Apple driver package and restarted. Upon restart it showed the loading fish for about 5 seconds before crashing to a black screen.

I thought it may have been the Apple drivers, so I booted up in OS X (lion), removed the boot camp partition, and started again with a clean install of the Win8 CP. This time I restarted immediately to test whether or not it would restart properly and it did the exact same thing: 5 seconds of loading fish, then black screen crash.

So I restarted again in Win 8 and it noticed that it had crashed and came up in Recovery mode with the "It looks like Windows didn't load correctly" screen, with "restart" or "see advanced repair options" button.

I have looped through this several times trying each possibility in the advanced repair options are and nothing has been successful. I basically have to do a "refresh" to get it to restart successfully in Win8 (which seems like a dirty OS install?). Time consuming!

If I select "Continue to Windows 8 Consumer Preview" it does the same thing with a crash to black screen after the fish.

I am a longtime mac user, but don't know anything about troubleshooting windows drivers / booting sequence, etc.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I am wondering if there's something I can dig into from the Unix side like old school system 7 extension enabling / disabling to troubleshoot which files are causing the startup issue? 🙂

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on May 22, 2012 1:03 PM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

May 22, 2012 1:29 PM in response to Adam HH

How large is the partition you created?

Did Windows install any or all the updates or not?

Did you try turn off auto update?

Do you have an SSD in there?

About the Recovery Options you have:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/22/designing-for-pcs-that-boot-faster -than-ever-before.aspx

Do a Safe Boot

Uninstall what was last updated

www.apple.com/support/bootcamp support articles

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Answer 2

Adam HH Author

Level 1

10 points

May 22, 2012 2:01 PM in response to The hatter

Thanks for your reply!

My partition is 30gb, it's all I had available. I know more is recommended but I've read it should be enough to just run the OS.

I did install the windows updates from within the Metro "More PC settings" Windows Update, there were 17. It crashed the same way after these updates.

I didn't turn off auto update - how do you do this?

The macbook air I have is the 11" 1.6ghz Core 2 Duo from later 2010 with a 128 SSD, 4GB RAM.

I just booted up in Safe mode, and it successfully booted (nice!) -- how do I troubleshoot to figure out what was last updated or could potentially be causing the problem? Do you suggest the Boot Logging selection from the Advanced Boot Options menu?

I guess I am looking for some guidance here because it looks like there are a ton of options and I don't know where to start.

Thanks again.

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Answer 3

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

May 22, 2012 2:13 PM in response to Adam HH

30GB will not accomodate all the updates. Once those are done, maybe with some trimmings.

turn off page file or set to 800MB

disable hibernation

those can equal your RAM x 2

cache and temp files need space

300MB installer will be compressed and 7x larger when expanded, plus room to write and update files

The "core" of Windows 8 32-bit is around 20GB but that does not account for updaters, drivers, prefs and cache and setting up user account profile.

The RC comes out in the next month and should be smoother and more refined. Next time, make room, off load files from OS X to another drive even if temporary - you need to anyway with just 110GB and.... SSDs NEED to have room to spare for write and their TRIM and garbage collection to work, and reduce write wear.

There will always be something new to learn every day, even after 5 yrs. just realize you will. It would be like trying to teach a young person what you wish you knew at 14 but only learned after having lived for 55 yrs and had kids and grandkids what might help.

there are books. blogs. I like reference books. And online forums help too but a book when you want it there in your lap when the computer won't boot or need a written guide. Google and Bing do pretty good job though in a pinch!

Windows Update: Control Panel. - get to know everything in C.P.

Use your Command Key to hop into and out of "Metro" where you can type 'xyzabc' and find things too.

Control click in Metro and "Show All" and pin to Start / Pin to Taskbar

Make sure you have room to install Apple drivers..

Use Drive Cleanup to make room. Uninstall what you do not need - including hiding things in Metro (control click on an icon or 'tile.'

Guide to SSD Optimization in Windows (can learn more than you imaginied)

http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guid e-2/

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Answer 4

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

May 22, 2012 2:16 PM in response to The hatter

PS:

Mac OS also needs 15% at least free space to operate.

Less and you can run into trouble.

20-25% is still small side so 70GB there should be 15GB free

and never less than 12GB for OS X partition.

You should definitely have backups of Mac.

Make a sparse disk image and store it on your backup hard drive such as TimeMachine uses, would take up 80GB at most it seems. That can be useful. Wtih an SSD always have a system image of the boot drive.

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Answer 5

chet814

Level 1

8 points

Jun 7, 2012 7:49 AM in response to Adam HH

Thanks SO MUCH for this post! I was totally lost after installing Windows 8 on my Boot Camp partition and my existing drivers didn't even install (say it has to be at Windows 7). But, after reading this post, then downloading OS X Lion, those new Boot Camp drivers (4) worked nicely (so far).

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