Restart after partition hangs on completely black screen

GKal777 wrote:

Working with a 15" MBP Mid-2009 running 10.10.4. Recently switched out the optical SuperDrive for a newly purchased Sandisk SSD, so no CD drive but my 120 GB SSD as well as 500GB regular HDD in the HD slot.

What is the link and negotiated SATA speed for each of these devices? I assume that you have SSD in main bay and HDD in the optibay. In older Macs prior to 2011, SATA speed issues for storage in optibay cause unstable IO and malfunctions.

I had successfully used Boot Camp perhaps 2 months prior with a bootable USB, before I had added my SSD and everything worked like a charm. However, now it seems as though the issue may lie with my new SSD as I have run into a brick wall.

The USB format and creation makes a difference. BCA creates a FAT32 with a bootable MBR. It is not a supported method to modify BCA Info.plist on Macs, and YMMV.

I begin the Boot Camp process as usual, click to create a Windows 7 install disk, download the support drivers, and install Windows 7. I select my ISO file as well as my USB then click continue. The support drivers are downloaded and the USB stick gets partitioned. Then I come to the next screen where I allocate the space for my new Windows partition (usually around 45GB) and again click continue. As soon as the partitioning for the new Windows volume is finished, my Mac restarts. The first time I used Boot Camp, after this restart, Windows began it's installation by booting from the USB. This time however, my computer hangs, and is stuck on a completely black screen. No flashing cursor, nothing, just black. The Mac is on, as I can hear a dull buzz indicating to me that it's on.

BCA will point to the physical path where the Optical drive is supposed to be, but there is nothing there available which can either load firmware or boot (DVD installer). There are no USB drivers loaded yet either.

I then boot back into OS X, and see that the partition for Boot Camp is all there, and my USB stick is formatted such that it appears to be bootable. But no matter what I try, I cannot find the USB stick after holding "Option" nor does the Boot Camp Assistant have any luck getting past the black screen I get.

How is the USB formatted? There is a BIOS emulation layer (CSM-BIOS) which is invoked when BCA and allows the USB to boot. It is missing in your specific case. There are other differences between 2009 and later models in terms of the Bootmanager.

The cleanest way is to put the Optical drive back in the Optibay, put the designated Windows drive in the main bay, install Windows (you do not need BCA). Move the Windows, if desired and put the SSD in the main bay. Windows may be unstable, or may not ever work. You hardware does not really support two SATA bay storage devices, only one storage and one optical drive are reasonably supported.

On older Macs, Apple capped SATA speeds. If the SATA speeds look stable, you may not see this issue. Yosemite has plugged many gaps with the USB booting workarounds for broken optical drives. There were several issues with 6Gb/s SATA on older Macs. Is your SSD a native SATA2 (3Gb/s) or does it negotiate rates?

One significant difference is that you did not have a second storage unit on the SATA bus, that you do now. Are you trying to install Windows on the SSD or HDD? You may want to consider disconnecting the disk you do not need for Windows and using the USB to try and install. Once installed connect the disconnected disk and test OS X and Windows with both disks connected.

Can you put the SSD in the main bay and then try the Windows installation with the Optibay disconnected?