Hi all.
I'm having a problem with bootcamp and I'm at my wits end.
It started today when I decided that I wanted to reinstall windows. That was my first mistake.
Specs: Mac Pro 3.1. Two hardrives, one running mac and one running windows 7. I should note that I recently upgraded the mac hard drive to OS X 10.8.5 so that I could utilize a non-EFI graphics card. This is about the 10th time I've done a install of windows through bootcamp and have never had issues. I decided prior to doing this that I'd take out the new card and re-install the old GTX mac graphics card to prevent any possible graphical issues that might occur. After doing that I booted up the mac hard drive, went to bootcamp and selected windows hard drive and let bootcamp do it's thing. I noticed that the new 10.8.5 interface with bootcamp was a little difference but essentially the same thing. The disc in question is Windows 7 Ultimate with SP1. I've used this same disc plenty of times without issue. As soon as it finishes the format it kills all programs, goes to a log out/reboot screen, restarts (pretty normal) and then suddenly....black screen with white cursor. Thinking it was a fluke I restarted the computer with a hard restart from the button. It booted back to the black screen. Odd. I hard restarted it again and held the alt key to bring it to the EFI boot screen (I think that's the right name) and was given the option for the mac hard drive and the rescue partition. I selected the mac hard drive and it boots back to mac just fine. I thought it odd that it's not showing the Windows hard drive at the EFI screen but maybe that's because the install isn't finished and the mac drivers aren't installed. Wash rinse repeat about 6 times. No dice. I thought ok, maybe I can make a bootable usb drive for windows. I followed a guide for that which involved me installing rEFIit utility. I used a micro sd card in a usb adaptor and formatted it with FAT32 to make it bootable (I assume that's how it works). I modified the file that prevents BootCamp from giving the 'make bootable usb drive' for windows so that I could use BootCamp to make the usb drive install. Followed the instructions. No dice. rEFIit upon boot gives the option to boot from usb but gives an error that kills it before it lets it boot, oddly enough in the rEFIit EFI boot screen I can't boot to the mac partition either. Not sure what's going on there. I thought 'ok scratch that lets go back to the disc issue'. So I got a friend's copy of windows and the dvd drive stopped reading. Like all of the sudden. Wouldn't even read an audio cd. Tried burning a test dvd and got an error message with about 4 different dvd media. Clearly the drive crapped out. Went to best buy and got an HP dvd drive and sata/molex adaptor to power it. Plugged the drive up and tested it. looks fine, works good, read everything. Thinking maybe the fluke came from a failing dvd drive the whole time I started up bootcamp and attempted to go through the usual install process with both dvd's of windows. Neither worked. Same black screen with a white flashing cursor. Left it on for an hour. No change. Every time I tried, same deal. At this point through all the googling and problem solving I'm at my wits end. I can only assume it's something about upgrading to 10.8.5 because never once did I have this issue with Snow Leopard. Please someone help me, please. I'm at the end of my rope.
Edit/Update: It looks like it's now going to a white screen with an apple logo after I try bootcamp with the disc. It stays there forever. If I hard restart it goes to a black screen with a white blinking cursor and stays there indefinitely. The only way to get back to mac is to hold alt on startup and select the mac hard drive.
I'm having a problem with bootcamp and I'm at my wits end.
It started today when I decided that I wanted to reinstall windows. That was my first mistake.
Specs: Mac Pro 3.1. Two hardrives, one running mac and one running windows 7. I should note that I recently upgraded the mac hard drive to OS X 10.8.5 so that I could utilize a non-EFI graphics card. This is about the 10th time I've done a install of windows through bootcamp and have never had issues. I decided prior to doing this that I'd take out the new card and re-install the old GTX mac graphics card to prevent any possible graphical issues that might occur. After doing that I booted up the mac hard drive, went to bootcamp and selected windows hard drive and let bootcamp do it's thing. I noticed that the new 10.8.5 interface with bootcamp was a little difference but essentially the same thing. The disc in question is Windows 7 Ultimate with SP1. I've used this same disc plenty of times without issue. As soon as it finishes the format it kills all programs, goes to a log out/reboot screen, restarts (pretty normal) and then suddenly....black screen with white cursor. Thinking it was a fluke I restarted the computer with a hard restart from the button. It booted back to the black screen. Odd. I hard restarted it again and held the alt key to bring it to the EFI boot screen (I think that's the right name) and was given the option for the mac hard drive and the rescue partition. I selected the mac hard drive and it boots back to mac just fine. I thought it odd that it's not showing the Windows hard drive at the EFI screen but maybe that's because the install isn't finished and the mac drivers aren't installed. Wash rinse repeat about 6 times. No dice. I thought ok, maybe I can make a bootable usb drive for windows. I followed a guide for that which involved me installing rEFIit utility. I used a micro sd card in a usb adaptor and formatted it with FAT32 to make it bootable (I assume that's how it works). I modified the file that prevents BootCamp from giving the 'make bootable usb drive' for windows so that I could use BootCamp to make the usb drive install. Followed the instructions. No dice. rEFIit upon boot gives the option to boot from usb but gives an error that kills it before it lets it boot, oddly enough in the rEFIit EFI boot screen I can't boot to the mac partition either. Not sure what's going on there. I thought 'ok scratch that lets go back to the disc issue'. So I got a friend's copy of windows and the dvd drive stopped reading. Like all of the sudden. Wouldn't even read an audio cd. Tried burning a test dvd and got an error message with about 4 different dvd media. Clearly the drive crapped out. Went to best buy and got an HP dvd drive and sata/molex adaptor to power it. Plugged the drive up and tested it. looks fine, works good, read everything. Thinking maybe the fluke came from a failing dvd drive the whole time I started up bootcamp and attempted to go through the usual install process with both dvd's of windows. Neither worked. Same black screen with a white flashing cursor. Left it on for an hour. No change. Every time I tried, same deal. At this point through all the googling and problem solving I'm at my wits end. I can only assume it's something about upgrading to 10.8.5 because never once did I have this issue with Snow Leopard. Please someone help me, please. I'm at the end of my rope.
Edit/Update: It looks like it's now going to a white screen with an apple logo after I try bootcamp with the disc. It stays there forever. If I hard restart it goes to a black screen with a white blinking cursor and stays there indefinitely. The only way to get back to mac is to hold alt on startup and select the mac hard drive.
Last edited:
