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grahamfw · Feb 6, 2007, 04:16 PM

First off let me say that I've been a mac user for nearly all my life (I'm 23) and I've been fixing macs AND pcs for the past 6 years or so as a side job while at college. I'm fairly good at figuring these things out if they can be figured out.

I'm LOST. I absolutely cannot get this thing to boot from cd. I have a Macbook Pro 2.16 C2D running all the lastest and greatest updates that Apple will give me and when I run bootcamp, on the restart, it says Press any key to boot from CD and I can dance on the keyboard all night long and nothing happens. It acts as though I'm not pressing anything and gives me the NTLDR is missing / Press Ctr+Alt+Del to restart.

I've reset the SMC, I've tried all the unnecessary firmware and smc updates and they are not needed. I've tried to manually select the CD to boot from at startup holding down the option button but alas, still will not attempt to boot from cd.

This is probably the third or so CD I've tried so I'm fairly certain that it is not the issue. FWIW, this is a corporate licensed copy of WinXP SP2 but I did check the EULA file on the cd and it is the full retail.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated as I don't know what else to do. Thanks in advance.

Graham W.

ibook_steve · Feb 6, 2007, 04:31 PM

I'm assuming you are using Boot Camp Assistant to create the separate partition and correctly going through Apple's instructions, right? And what's NTLDR?

Steve

grahamfw · Feb 6, 2007, 04:37 PM

Originally Posted by ibook_steve

I'm assuming you are using Boot Camp Assistant to create the separate partition and correctly going through Apple's instructions, right? And what's NTLDR?

Steve

Yep, using boot camp and using the application to TRY to boot from the cd.

I believe it is defaulting to the NTLDR (something to do with handling booting on a Windows partition...google it if you need more info) because it is not booting from the cd (since it's not accepting my keystrokes of the ANY key). I do have the partition already setup for windows to be installed upon, just cd that will boot and install windows.

cgc · Feb 6, 2007, 09:51 PM

Do you have a wireless keyboard? If so, get a USB jeyboard as you cannot use wireless KB.

brokenjago · Feb 6, 2007, 10:58 PM

I would assume that since he's using a MacBook Pro that he does not, in fact, have a wireless "jeyboard."

ghporter · Feb 7, 2007, 07:01 AM

grahamfw, if you're talking about the restart DURING the XP installation, you DO NOT WANT TO BOOT FROM THE CD. This particular bit of fun is one of Microsoft's worst "punish the user" issues-they NEVER tell you that after loading a bunch of stuff the installer will reboot and you MUST NOT tell it to boot from the CD or you start the process all over again.

If you are just trying to start the installation, Boot Camp will prompt you to insert the CD and you won't have to worry about "booting from the CD." This is a minor failing on Apple's part because Boot Camp doesn't explicitly tell you what's going on either, but at least it doesn't get you stuck in a permanent loop!

Helpful?

grahamfw · Feb 7, 2007, 08:34 AM

Thanks for the help guys. Turns out I WAS able to "Press any key to boot from CD" with an Apple keyboard plugged in and the install went mostly without a hitch. I was unable to actually boot into windows though since apparently the hal.dll file is corrupt and from what I can gather from other users, the best course of action is to completely erase the partition with Bootcamp, remake it, and reinstall Windows. (Why is reinstall windows such a common phrase these days?)

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Graham

cgc · Feb 7, 2007, 09:09 PM

Originally Posted by brokenjago

I would assume that since he's using a MacBook Pro that he does not, in fact, have a wireless "jeyboard."

Must've read "Mac Pro." Oh well... Thanks for finding my typo, not you only have 1x10E11 more posts in these forums to proofread

msuper69 · Feb 9, 2007, 12:36 PM

Originally Posted by grahamfw

... (Why is reinstall windows such a common phrase these days?)
...

"these days?"

It's always been like that. Rather than fiddle around trying to figure out what the heck has gone fubared, it's easier to just reinstall.

ghporter · Feb 9, 2007, 03:47 PM

Make sure your Windows disc is very clean. I've seen some very fast optical drives simply not handle error correction for slightly dirty (and particularly slightly dirty CD-Rs) discs, but after a cleaning the drive read the disc perfectly.