Boot Camp - Way to unstable for release?

[hkarlsen]

Edit: Ahh, typo in the title. The shame..

Here my thoughts after having several heavy issues with boot camp spread over time.

I first installed Windows XP when I got my early 2008 Mac Pro. Boot Camp was probably beta back then, but I cant say my experience has changed much through Vista 32 bit or now Windows 7 64 bit. The way to dual boot, holding ALt during boot, has worked 1/10 times. Literally. The boot symbols are usually delayed, so I know when I choose the win partition, it gives me the "No bootable device" error.

Two times have I had heavy OS X crashes after these boot-up "games". This last time I had to completely reinstall OS X (or upgrade to SL). How could this be, im not even booting into OS X when im trying to boot into win. I even have a separate hard drive for my Win partition.

Not to mention the stream of driver issues you encounter when you finally manage to get inside Windows. I actually had my apple wireless and mouse working in Windows 7, but then I installed Boot Camp drivers of the DVD, and now theyre dead.

I know. Its Windows, why would I miss it? Gaming or apps, regardless. Apple shouldnt include a program that functions so poorly, if they insist on higher standards elsewhere. It only reflects badly upon them. I consider myself a decent level mac user, venturing into command line troubleshooting if needed. But Boot Camp remains a mystery to me

Thank you

 

[ayeying]

I have no problems like you described at all, ever. I started using Boot Camp back when it first came out as Beta for Tiger. Been using it through even today running Windows 7 on my Air. No problems whatsoever.

Did you install it into a 2nd hard drive or a 2nd partition? I know Windows XP has some issues (sometimes) when it's installed in a 2nd hard drive on the Mac Pro.

 

[Stridder44]

Edit: Ahh, typo in the title. The shame..

Here my thoughts after having several heavy issues with boot camp spread over time.

I first installed Windows XP when I got my early 2008 Mac Pro. Boot Camp was probably beta back then, but I cant say my experience has changed much through Vista 32 bit or now Windows 7 64 bit. The way to dual boot, holding ALt during boot, has worked 1/10 times. Literally. The boot symbols are usually delayed, so I know when I choose the win partition, it gives me the "No bootable device" error.

Two times have I had heavy OS X crashes after these boot-up "games". This last time I had to completely reinstall OS X (or upgrade to SL). How could this be, im not even booting into OS X when im trying to boot into win. I even have a separate hard drive for my Win partition.

Not to mention the stream of driver issues you encounter when you finally manage to get inside Windows. I actually had my apple wireless and mouse working in Windows 7, but then I installed Boot Camp drivers of the DVD, and now theyre dead.

I know. Its Windows, why would I miss it? Gaming or apps, regardless. Apple shouldnt include a program that functions so poorly, if they insist on higher standards elsewhere. It only reflects badly upon them. I consider myself a decent level mac user, venturing into command line troubleshooting if needed. But Boot Camp remains a mystery to me

Thank you

Something is seriously wrong here. I've never heard or seen anyone having the problems you described. I'm not saying your problems aren't real of course, just very unique. I mean OS X crashing because you booted into Windows? I wonder if there's some kind of hardware issues going on here.

 

[NT1440]

Ever stop to think that maybe its your computer having issues? Bootcamp is praised by the industry, i dont think it would be if it behaved like that for everyone.

 

[hkarlsen]

I have no problems like you described at all, ever. I started using Boot Camp back when it first came out as Beta for Tiger. Been using it through even today running Windows 7 on my Air. No problems whatsoever.

Did you install it into a 2nd hard drive or a 2nd partition? I know Windows XP has some issues (sometimes) when it's installed in a 2nd hard drive on the Mac Pro.

Thanks, so its a known issue to have Win on a seperate drive, as the only partition?

There really arent many others with these issues? As regards to my hardware, Im a video professional who has used this machine extensivly for the last year or so, doing all kinds of CPU intensive work over the last year. So if theres a hardware issue, it is a hardware issue provoked from deep inside the winkernel.

Update: Just got my first bluescreen inside Win7. Just to let you know I havnt the time to game anyways

 

[ayeying]

Thanks, so its a known issue to have Win on a seperate drive, as the only partition?

There really arent many others with these issues? As regards to my hardware, Im a video professional who has used this machine extensivly for the last year or so, doing all kinds of CPU intensive work over the last year. So if theres a hardware issue, it is a hardware issue provoked from deep inside the winkernel.

Update: Just got my first bluescreen inside Win7. Just to let you know I havnt the time to game anyways

The only issue with Windows XP on a separate drive I know of, is when I had my 8-core Mac Pro, it would show up as "NTDLR Not Found" or something like that randomly. The drive's fine, the files' are fine, but the BIOS emulation created problems. Installing it with the OS X drive (partitioned) fixed that.

However, it really seems like your hardware, most likely the SATA ports and/or logic board has some issues and Boot Camp's BIOS emulation might be triggering them.

The only time I have seen blue screens in Windows on Mac these days is when I screw up driver installs or faults in drivers. Otherwise, its rock solid, better than my former Dell PC's.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

The only time I have seen blue screens in Windows on Mac these days is when I screw up driver installs or faults in drivers. Otherwise, its rock solid, better than my former Dell PC's.

I'm jealous! The worst computer I ever owned was my Macbook Pro running Tiger and Windows XP - Tiger would KP once a week, and XP's battery life was measured in minutes instead of hours. Having said that, I now have a dedicated XP box that's rock solid, and Leopard has been a god-send as far as stability goes on my MBP.

 

[ayeying]

I'm jealous! The worst computer I ever owned was my Macbook Pro running Tiger and Windows XP - Tiger would KP once a week, and XP's battery life was measured in minutes instead of hours. Having said that, I now have a dedicated XP box that's rock solid, and Leopard has been a god-send as far as stability goes on my MBP.

My first mac was a Black MacBook. It KPed a bit but I think it had something to do with Tiger, not sure. When I upgraded to Leopard the KPs stopped. The battery life, I gotta admit, could've been way better. I had 1.5 hours in Windows with 3.5 hours in OSX. And that thing ran VERY hot. You know, thinking back, I think that system probably had a huge amount of thermal paste blob on it. It was built within that time of those issues

 

[macfanboy]

boot camp works as advertised for me except for the 13" macbook pro microphone problem (which sucks cause i only have windows for orange box and CSS, which are 2 very addicting games)

 

[Stridder44]

I'm jealous! The worst computer I ever owned was my Macbook Pro running Tiger and Windows XP - Tiger would KP once a week, and XP's battery life was measured in minutes instead of hours.

Well that's because you were running XP.