Windows 8/10 boot to black screen during installation

Alright, I have a 2011 macbook air and I needed to re-install windows 8 because I wanted to change the bootcamp partition size. However, once I get to the stage "windows is preparing your pc" , which is right after installation, but before I create a username/account, my screen goes black. A restart will result in the windows icon and right when it should boot to the login screen the screen goes and stays black again and no cursor ever appears and ctrl-alt-delete doesn't have an affect.


So I installed windows 10 preview and the black screen happens when windows update looks for a display or graphics driver. With windows 10 build 10130 I was able to boot into safemode and disable both those drivers and windows would boot into the login screen and everything would be perfect. However, the RTM (10240) build caused the issue to come back during its installation and safemode could not work since it appears to not work if the system is trying to install an update.


So I wiped the partition and attempted to install windows 8 again and the same thing happened as above except an attempt to put it into safemode ended with an error code 0X000...5c. Is there a way around this? My goal is to install a working copy of windows 8 so I can upgrade to windows 10. The final released copy of windows 10 worked with the trick I did with build 10130, but it was recognized as not activated.

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Aug 3, 2015 2:56 PM

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18 replies

Aug 3, 2015 8:32 PM in response to josephew

Let me explain entries 4,5,6 in your current setup.


GPT4 = Microsoft System Reserved - Used on GPT disks for EFI installation. It is internal data used by Windows, similar to a BCD.

GPT5 = Main NTFS partition.

GPT6 = Windows RE (Recovery Environment).


BCA cannot clean this properly. It has to be done manually. The following terminal commands need to be exactly typed otherwise there is potential for data loss.


A. Merge disk0s4 - disk0s6 into a single FAT partition.


diskutil mergePartitions fat32 BOOTCAMP disk0s4 disk0s6


This is the syntax help for the command. Please read the note below the example.

diskutil mergepartitions

Usage: diskutil mergePartitions [force] format name

DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode


Merge two or more pre-existing partitions into one. The first disk parameter

is the starting partition; the second disk parameter is the ending partition;

this given range of two or more partitions will be merged into one.


All partitions in the range, except for the first one, must be unmountable.


All data on merged partitions other than the first will be lost; data on the

first partition will be lost as well if the "force" argument is given.


If "force" is not given, and the first partition has a resizable file system

(e.g. JHFS+), it will be grown in a data-preserving manner, even if a different

file system is specified (in fact, your file system and volume name parameters

are both ignored in this case). If "force" is not given, and the first

partition is not resizable, you will be prompted if you want to erase.


If "force" is given, the first partition is always formatted. You should

do this if you wish to reformat to a new file system type.


Merged partitions are required to be ordered sequentially on disk.

See diskutil list for the actual on-disk ordering; BSD slice identifiers

may in certain circumstances not always be in numerical order but the

top-to-bottom order given by diskutil list is always the on-disk order.


Ownership of the affected disk is required.


Example: diskutil mergePartitions JHFS+ NewName disk3s4 disk3s7

This example will merge all partitions *BETWEEN* disk3s4 and disk3s7,

preserving data on disk3s4 but destroying data on disk3s5, disk3s6,

disk3s7 and any invisible free space partitions between those disks;

disk3s4 will be grown to cover the full space if possible.


B. Download GPT Fdisk from http://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/ and create a Hybrid MBR.


Rebuild MBR to match the new GPT information thus resetting the Hybrid MBR. Use defaults for other questions (like partition codes). The only values that need modifications are the Boot flags and step 10. Accept all other defaults that Gdisk offers. Please see thesample Q&A as an example. These steps can be repeated if you make a mistake before you get to Step 12, otherwise start from Step 1 for these steps. Step 6 has numbers which are typed with a space between the numbers.

  1. Sudo gdisk /dev/rdisk0
  2. P (Print list of parts)
  3. R (Recover)
  4. O (print current Hybrid MBR)
  5. H (chooses Hybrid)
  6. Partitions numbers to be hybridized: 2 3 4
  7. Y (Good for GRUB question)
  8. N (part 2 boot flag)
  9. N (part 3 boot flag)
  10. N (part 4 boot flag - designated Windows partition)
  11. O (print current Hybrid MBR)
  12. W (Write the new MBR)
  13. Y (Yes! write the new MBR)
  14. Reboot


After Reboot use the USB to install Windows (do not choose EFI). Please post back with any error messages.

Aug 3, 2015 8:43 PM in response to Loner T

Alright, on the first part I got this error message when using the command prompt:



Elesters-MacBook-Air:~ ElesterW$ diskutil mergePartitions fat32 BOOTCAMP disk0s4 disk0s6

The chosen disk does not support resizing.

Do you wish to format instead? (y/N) y

Merging partitions into a new partition

Start partition: disk0s4

Finish partition: disk0s6


Merging partitions encountered error "Couldn't read partition map (-69876)".

The erase will not occur.

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Windows 8/10 boot to black screen during installation

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