[hojo]

Mac Pro 3 ghz 4-core with 9 gig Crucial ram, 500 gig HDD x 4, ACD 30" x 2, Leopard. X1900 video. Windows on a 50 gig partition on my main "Macintosh HD".

If I boot into Windows by selecting it from holding down the Option key at startup, then video isn't initialized (monitor is FUBAR) and it ultimately crashes to a blue "fatal error" screen (I can't read it). Only thing I can read is that "Windows did not start normally"....(duh).

If I boot into Windows by setting it as the startup disk in System Preferences, no problem - boots into Windows normally.

My system is pretty stock - no weird hardware or startup software. Any ideas?

[ibook_steve]

Do you have multiple BC partitions? Could you be selecting the wrong partition (or a bad partition) at the option screen? I'm pretty sure that changing it in System Preferences is a permanent switch while the option screen is a one-time boot, so they do basically the same thing.

Steve

[ghporter]

I'd be interested to find out whether there is more than one "Windows" folder on the Boot Camp partition. "Windows," "Windows0", "Windows1", and so on are valid-and can be separately booted to. The "boot.ini" file would be interesting to see as well. You see, boot.ini is a text file that the NT loader uses to decide what folder to boot from, and if there have been multiple attempts to install Windows (even just two, with one being successful) you could have more than one Windows folder and a bad boot.ini selection...

[hojo]

No, only one installation on the Boot Camp partition. I do have a Parallels/XP partition on the same physical drive. The boot.ini file...

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

I've actually found that the boot up to Windows XP crashes occasionally even if I set it as startup. What does work, using either Boot Camp/Windows startup method, is to shut the computer down and wait about 30 seconds to restart, rather than just clicking "restart". It only happens when going from Mac to Windows...I can go right to Mac from Windows. I'm assuming that somehow my hardware wants a cold boot when trying to start up Windows. I suppose it might be a problem with my ATI video drivers and I've contemplated downloading and installing them separately onto the Windows Boot Camp partition. I know that Apple has recommended that for the NVidea cards...no mention of ATI products.