Unable to select boot disk using option key in boot camp

[JamesJones]

Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I installed boot camp with XP SP2 on my macbook 2.2ghz, without problems. The only issue is that if I hold option while booting up, I can only select my OSX partition. I cannot choose to boot windows like this. I need to restart from the mac in order to get to windows. I've tried looking around a lot (including searching here) and I haven't read about anyone else having this issue. I reinstalled all of the drivers in windows with my leopard CD, but that didn't fix anything.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Suggestions for me to try? I really appreciate it,

Cheers,

-James

[GadgetNeil]

I'm having the same problem.
I can boot into windows, but only by going to system preferences, changing the startup drive, then restarting (and then to go back to OS X, in windows, I do the reverse, in boot camp settings).
Holding the option key, an icon for a drive comes up, but only the OS partition - for some reason, the windows partition's icon doesn't come up.

So I can boot back and forth, but it would be nice to be able to do it the other way.

[jweila01]

Same problem here. I new to the Mac world but have searched extensively and not found a solution. I have a new white MacBook 2.2 Ghz.

[xUKHCx]

It seems there is a problem with the new macbooks and FAT32 bootcamp partitions.

Either you can live with it not showing in the boot option menu (and hope apple update) or you can convert it to NTFS.

To convert it to NTFS follow this guide (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456984.aspx).

Note you won't be able to natively write to the NTFS partition from OS X but you can get around this with MacFUSE.

[GSMiller]

xUKHCx is right, a friend of mine was having the same issue. Her MacBook was also booting into Windows by default, and continues to do so even after the partition was converted to NTFS, are yours doing the same?

[xUKHCx]

xUKHCx is right, a friend of mine was having the same issue. Her MacBook was also booting into Windows by default, and continues to do so even after the partition was converted to NTFS, are yours doing the same?

You can either try setting the preferences in System Preferences Startup Disk/Botocamp settings in windows. Or you can reset the PRAM by holding down CMD+OPT+P+R on boot, this will clear the stored option and the mac will default to OS X.

[jweila01]

Downloaded and and install rEFIt. It solved the problem for me plus it has a nice graphical boot selector screen.

The rEFIt project website is at http://refit.sourceforge.net/.