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Level 1

4 points

Updated to Yosemite and Bootcamp XP stopped working

Hello. Thank you ahead for any help anyone can provide.

I've read several threads on this but am not sure they apply to my problem. I have a spring 2011 iMac 27". Run Windows XP via bootcamp. I do have 3 partitions show up when I access the boot selector on startup. Mac HD, Bootcamp, Recovery. When I select Bootcamp, Windows starts to load, gets 2 bars, then crashes to blue screen and the computer immediately restarts.

I ran testdisk and the partition start/end points seem to be correct. (no gaps or over lap). At this point I'm not really sure what to do. :/

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Mar 25, 2015 10:18 PM

38 replies

Gd5150 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2015 4:16 PM in response to Loner T

Hmmm ok. Do you know anyone who's gotten Windows XP to work after upgrading to Yosemite? Is a fix possible? Or should I erase my Boocamp partition and install a newer version of Windows?

My Mac doesn't have thunderbolt, it has Firewire 800.

Ill try installing OS SL to an external device. Once that's done, what do I do?

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 27, 2015 4:15 PM in response to Gd5150

Can you try the older version of OSX and try before you delete XP?

Gd5150 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2015 4:35 PM in response to Loner T

Ill need to figure out how to install OS 10.6 from DVD to external drive. Once I do that what do I do? Run OS SL then try to restart to Windows?

Gd5150 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2015 9:04 PM in response to Loner T

Ok I installed snow leopard onto an external drive. Started the mac in snow leopard and then restarted to bootcamp, Windows still crashed. Is there something I should be doing to try to fix this?

Gd5150 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 30, 2015 10:59 AM in response to Loner T

Hello. I'm considering trying the fixboot, fixmbr, bootcfg commands from the Windows XP recovery console. Not really sure what to attempt at this point. Any help is appreciated.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 30, 2015 11:36 AM in response to Gd5150

Try the /ScanOS first. /FixBoot, /FixMBR and BCD rebuild in that order.

Gd5150 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 30, 2015 1:16 PM in response to Loner T

Should I be worried about any of these affecting my Mac partition? Also Windows XP doesn't have ScanOS, just bootcfg.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 30, 2015 1:46 PM in response to Gd5150

None of these commands should affect your OS X side, but a good backup is always recommended.

Gd5150 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 30, 2015 1:54 PM in response to Loner T

Ok, I did bootcfg /list and it said "there are currently no boot entries available to display".

Bootcfg /scan does list my Windows XP install.

So now I believe this means I have to do a bootcfg /rebuild?

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 30, 2015 2:20 PM in response to Gd5150

Yes, you need to rebuild. ScanOS and scan behave similarly.

Gd5150 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 30, 2015 3:32 PM in response to Loner T

OMG It worked! 88 miles per hour!!!! My Windows XP is loading wohoo!

So now when I select Windows on the boot selecter at startup, it goes to the boot.ini list giving me 2 optios:

Windows XP Home Edition (which is what I named it using bootcfg /rebuild) &

Windows XP Home Edition (which is the old one and still crashes)

I opened the boot.ini file in notepad to delete the 2nd (original option) that doesn't work and heres what the boot.ini file reads:

[boot loader]

timeout=20

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

The partitian numbers are different. The top is the one that works, and the bottom doesn't work.

Thank you for the help Loner T!

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 30, 2015 3:39 PM in response to Gd5150

There is a reason for the entry which does not work. It is fixable too. If you notice the difference is because your original XP installation came from a Snow Leopard OS X machine, which has no concept of a Recovery HD. On post-SL OS X versions, Recovery HD was introduced, which pushed Bootcamp to disk0s4 (instead of disk0s3). My recommendation is to delete the following entry and test again. This is to ensure that future recovery of XP can be done without confusing the Windows Recovery process.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

I also would recommend a fresh backup of XP on an external drive to be used as a baseline for the future.

Glad to see it work properly. 🙂

Gd5150 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 30, 2015 5:52 PM in response to Loner T

I just erased the faulty boot reference line and all is good now. It actually seems like it loads faster than before all of this.

Hopefully someone at Apple will see this and incorporate this fix into their OS update...update. This is a fairly simple and obvious glitch in the Yosemite upgrade that could be easily fixed.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 30, 2015 6:25 PM in response to Gd5150

The XP support on Snow Leopard (10.6.x) being carried over to Yosemite (10.10.x) is highly unlikely.

Feb 8, 2016 10:32 PM in response to Gd5150

I'm having this same issue. I was wondering how to get into the Windows XP recovery console. My computer does not show the blue screen prompting you to press R. Mine shows a black screen asking if I would like to start Windows normally or use last known configurations.

I also do not know where to type the commands: /ScanOS, /FixBoot, /FixMBR and BCD rebuild

Hopefully it makes sense once I get to the recovery screen.

Are all these steps done on the Windows side, or some on the Mac side?

Updated to Yosemite and Bootcamp XP stopped working