ALT-option to choose which OS to boot stopped working.

[Pavia]

I installed windows on my early 2010 MBP, and it's been working perfectly so far, but today when I woke up and had to use windows, nothing seems to happen when I hold down (either) ALT when booting.
I filmed this with my phone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkdRfcxmBuU to help you see what my problem is.

I press the power button, it makes that boot sound while I hold ALT down. Then it just shows the mouse without the two harddiscs.

I'm completely new to mac, so I don't know if I can fix this easily, or I have to re-install windows (7). Or if it can be fixed with the OS X dvd that came with the MacBook Pro.

If specs is needed, this is what I'm running:

Early 2010 MacBook Pro 15"
i7 2.66
4 gb ram
7200 rpm harddrive
HR Glossy screen


FIXED! My USB hub apparently stopped windows from showing up. Strange!

 

[aly]

I had a similar problem with my old MBP (2005 - i think) that the keyboard did not seem to work on startup so I couldn't change boot drive at startup but would then work fine once Mac OSX had started up. However after a while the keyboard just stopped working altogether and it turned out to be a hardware fault. Hopefully this is not true in your case.

I don't know a solution to your problem but a workaround is to open system preferences on the mac and go to startup disk and change it to the windows 7 partition. Restart and it will load windows. To change back to mac side, open the bootcamp control panel on windows and choose Mac OS parition, then restart.

Hope that helps,

Aly

 

[Pavia]

I had a similar problem with my old MBP (2005 - i think) that the keyboard did not seem to work on startup so I couldn't change boot drive at startup but would then work fine once Mac OSX had started up. However after a while the keyboard just stopped working altogether and it turned out to be a hardware fault. Hopefully this is not true in your case.

I don't know a solution to your problem but a workaround is to open system preferences on the mac and go to startup disk and change it to the windows 7 partition. Restart and it will load windows. To change back to mac side, open the bootcamp control panel on windows and choose Mac OS parition, then restart.

Hope that helps,

Aly

Thanks for your reply I recently had my old logitech keyboard plugged in the USB on my MacBook Pro, could this have anything to do with the problem ?
Edit: Windows partition doesnt show up in the start up disk preferences, so I'm going to try and run the windows 7 dvd and run either a recover or fix.

 

[aly]

I doubt another keyboard would have caused the problem.

I think the fact that the windows 7 partition doesn't show up is more likely pointing to the problem. I think going through the install procedure again is the best option. I take it you used the bootcamp assisitant to do the install? From your first post I take it that windows 7 dual boot has been working in the past? Does the windows 7 partition show up in the Finder? Or in disk utility?

 

[Pavia]

I doubt another keyboard would have caused the problem.

I think the fact that the windows 7 partition doesn't show up is more likely pointing to the problem. I think going through the install procedure again is the best option. I take it you used the bootcamp assisitant to do the install? From your first post I take it that windows 7 dual boot has been working in the past? Does the windows 7 partition show up in the Finder? Or in disk utility?

The partition shows up in the finder as BOOTCAMP, and it has been working. After I inserted the windows dvd, OS X would no longer boot up, but then I unplugged everything and it worked again. But the windows partition still isn't showing up in start up disk preferences.