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Mac Mini mid 2011 with High Sierra and Windows 10 1709 (Bootcamp v5). Freezing at boot menu

I have the forementioned config. It worked flawlessly for a while, but has stopped booting in Windows about a week ago and the boot menu has kept freezing when i choose Win10. Yesterday I installed ReFind and it finally booted again into Windows, but the this morning did the usual boot menu freeze...! BTW I can't afford reinstalling everything from scratch, because i have a lot of work data in the Windows 10 partition which i need for an urgent job i have to finish in a few weeks.

Mac mini, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Mar 5, 2018 5:52 AM

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35 replies

Mar 5, 2018 6:27 PM in response to iibosshog

iibosshog wrote:


I have Tuxera NTFS 2018 (previously Paragon NTFS) installed to access and modify the data in my external NTFS formatted portable 1 TB drive.

All third-party NTFS software has a couple of issues.

  • Inability to cleanly close NTFS files
  • Leave the MFT in an unknown state, depending on how the OS switch is performed
  • Interfere with the System Preferences -> Startup Disks


iibosshog wrote:


Will that SMC reset destroy any data or restore the O.S. to factory default?

No. How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support .

Mar 7, 2018 2:51 PM in response to iibosshog

You still seem to have remnants of the non-Apple NTFS driver. In most cases, this behavior is due to a background chkdsk being run before the file system is 'clean' for Windows to continue to boot.


If you boot in macOS, and click on the BC/Windows partition, what type of a file system does it show - NTFS or a third-party NTFS? This screen shot is from an older Disk Utility.


User uploaded file


This is the newer DU.


User uploaded file

Mar 5, 2018 6:18 AM in response to iibosshog

W10 is not officially supported on a 2011 Mac. If you have Automatic Updates enabled, you may end up with drivers which do not support the Apple hardware correctly.


You have underlying W10 issues, which rEFInd cannot really address. Was W10 clean-installed on this Mini or upgraded from W7/W8.1? You mention BC v5.x - are you referring to BC assistant version or BC drivers version? What is the version of macOS?

Mar 5, 2018 10:35 AM in response to Loner T

I'm aware of that, it worked just fine til some days ago. Well, it used to boot into Win10 successfully only after several hours after i used Mac OS (that's weird). I was talking about BC5 assistant. I guess in the last couple of years I updated two or three of drivers, nothing important. I have automatic updates turned on and I remember the graphic card drivers are the only update i received from Win Update (apart from the usual ones). Yes, I upgraded from Win8.1 a couple years ago without any problems. It's High Sierra 10.13.3

Mar 7, 2018 5:18 AM in response to iibosshog

iibosshog wrote:


I uninstalled Tuxera clean with CleanMyMac and did both resetting, did a full cleanup, rebooted and unplugged the usb dvd writer and the external drive and tried to reboot into Win10, but the boot menu still freezed.

CleanMyMac is not recommended. It is better to use the uninstaller which came with the product.


Can you boot W10 in Safe Mode?

Mar 7, 2018 8:12 AM in response to iibosshog

iibosshog wrote:


And on the positive-ish side I just found out that I can enable NTFS write with a couple of commands...

Be aware that Apple does not certify read-write through their driver, so performance may not be optimal, and you may see some file system corruption.


Do you have a mechanism of backing up W10? Can you boot from the W10 installer and run chkdsk on C:?

Mar 7, 2018 2:25 PM in response to Loner T

Maybe I haven't been clear about what happens. 1) I press Alt+C and the boot menu appears. 2) I choose the Bootcamp drive and it just freezes there. I can't move the mouse cursor and I can't move to any of the selection. After a couple of seconds the light on the wireless keyboard receiver fire up and the fan start rolling, like it's about to boot, but it just stays there. In the worst moments it used to boot after, like, 15 minutes, that just doesn't happen anymore, though.

It's the same with a Win10 1709 installation dvd.

Mar 8, 2018 12:45 AM in response to Loner T

Nome volume : BOOTCAMP

Tipo di volume : Volume fisico

Nome dispositivo BSD : disk0s4

Punto di attivazione : /Volumes/BOOTCAMP

File system : File System Windows NT (NTFS)

Connessione : SATA

Percorso albero dispositivo : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/SATA@1F,2/PRT0@0/PMP@0

Scrivibile : No

Distingue maiuscole/minuscole : No

UUID file system : 74DD627E-AF62-4025-B44F-3ED6229ADE72

Capacità volume : 121.247.891.456

Spazio disponibile (cancellabile + libero) : 26.135.949.312

Spazio cancellabile : 0

Spazio libero : 26.135.949.312

Spazio utilizzato : 95.111.942.144

Conteggio file : 357.899

Proprietari attivati : No

È codificato : No

Protezione integrità di sistema supportata : No

Verificabile : No

Riparabile : No

Avviabile : No

Journaled : No

Numero disco : 0

Numero partizione : 4

Nome supporto :

Tipo di supporto : Generico

Può essere espulso : No

Stato solido : No

Dischi padre : disk0

Mar 8, 2018 5:59 AM in response to Loner T

Today it's 2:50 p.m. and the sun is shining in any possible ways, because it finally booted at once into Win10...in the daylight! :-) As ridicolous as it may sound, my Mac has always started booting faster into Windows with a warmer weather. Heating problems maybe? Could you hang on another day, please? So we'll see how it will behave tomorrow and then I will do some checking with the Windows diagnostics tools in the DVD... If it let me. Thank you very much. Back to work.

Mar 10, 2018 1:53 AM in response to Loner T

Here is today's report. Yesterday after ignoring the "alt" command twice it booted into Win10 after I chose the Windows partition in the boot disk menu, in which by the way the two icons take about a minute or so to show up. Today we are back to the same old. I am trying the same boot disk menu method as I did yesterday. New ideas? Thanks.

Mac Mini mid 2011 with High Sierra and Windows 10 1709 (Bootcamp v5). Freezing at boot menu

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