Failure to Boot…Camp

ByMike Moffit

To give a little background before launching into this article: I am a junior technician compared to some here at Small Dog Electronics. I have spent more time diagnosing and fixing PCs than Apple Products, so the conversion was a complete one-eighty degree turn for me. I have never attempted to install Windows alongside OS X before, but because of needs here at the ‘office’ and data backup/transfer options, having every tool available is a benefit. That is why I attempted to install Windows alongside my OS X installation. The problem is my personal machine only supports Windows 7, whereas I was trying to install Windows 8 which is the copy I owned.

I discussed the installation with the other techs here in South Burlington, and the common recommended jump off point was to resize the main partition using Disk Utility, and create a new partition in a FAT32 or free space format then boot from the Windows install medium. All seemed to work well until I attempted to install the Boot Camp support files into the Windows installation so that I could set up my Mac hardware to work properly. The support files installed successfully, the Windows OS requested to restart the machine, and I pressed the “OK” button. The machine restarted and began to boot into the Windows partition. Then the screen flashed white briefly, went black and stayed that way.

Uh oh…

I rebooted the machine a couple more times only to see the same thing. I tried to use the built in Windows recovery options but none worked. I then booted to my Mac OS partition, erased and recreated the partition for my Windows installation and began the process again. This time I tried to install all the drivers manually, but they didn’t make my touchpad work properly because there wasn’t the Boot Camp interface for me to set up my preferences. I went online, downloaded a different set of Boot Camp support files and installed them. I rebooted the machine and got the flash with the black screen again.

Frustration began to set in at this point. I restarted the whole process again. By this time I had noticed that the EFI section of option booting began to increase the amount of Windows installation options and I couldn’t keep track of which one was the correct one after I installed the third or fourth time. I had retried to create the installation media, and I can only use flash drives for installing Windows because my optical drive is nonfunctional and I don’t feel like spending money on something I’m potentially going to replace soon. The EFI had too many Windows installations and after the fourth or fifth time (each time trying different methods in creating the media, performing a different install, using multiple images and install discs, essentially trying everything I could in order get the install to work the way its supposed too) I decided to wipe and restore the machine. Using Time Machine and an external hard drive, I backed up my computer, wiped everything clean and started the process over again.

I must make note that some of the problems and irritations I was having with my machine seem to have been taken care of with the wipe and restore (things like not waking up when it’s supposed to or freezing on login). That did cheer me up a bit once I realized that I was no longer experiencing those little trifles. I do know there is something wrong with my machine because it was dropped during its lifetime and I expect that it’s only a matter of time before the problems start up again. I tried to install Windows one more time and got the same result, the infamous “Black Boot”. I then decided to hold off on my installation, wiped it one more time, reinstalled OS X, remigrated my data back onto my machine and called it quits. I spent four days trying to get this to work and am not all that happy to have lost the battle. More research needs to be done because I have not given up on the war. I believe that it is my machine that is causing the problem (I fear that it needs a new logic board because of the drop) but I am grateful it’s at least holding on for dear life until the time it finally gives its last and my hand is forced to purchase the latest and greatest.

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