[Waragainstsleep]

While I'm here, the XP-SP2 warning stick can probably be safely removed or at least updated now. Most new Macs need much newer versions of Windows than that.

Got an Aluminium iMac 2011 model I think it is but it runs Windows 7 pretty much all the time, natively via boot camp. Its fine when its running but it has a tendency to lose its marbles during the boot process is you shut it down.

It boots to a grey screen if left to its own devices usually and then just sits there indefinitely.
If you alt-boot it, you get startup manager but clicking on the Boot Camp partition will usually cause it to freeze the first time, sometimes a second time, then after that it will boot into Windows normally and be fine again until the next time it shuts down.

Boot Camp is properly selected and remembered in the Startup Disk settings, I've tried PRAM and SMC resets and selecting it again and this behaviour persists. Never seen another one do this, its odd and annoying.

[Mike Wuerthele]

Apple software update does periodically update Boot Camp drivers as well. Might want to send it into OS X to check that.

[ghporter]

Those updates usually also provide fixes for things like boot manager weirdness, which is what it sounds like is going on. The boot code must still be there or you'd never boot into 7, but finding it is the job of the boot manager (part of EFI on Macs since...2005?), and it looks like it's gotten goofy. There should be a Boot Camp update that addresses it if we're talking about Win7, since Boot Camp now supports Win8 - it's been around long enough to be "mature," so to speak.

[Waragainstsleep]

Thats a good shout actually. I'll check for an EFI update next chance I get. Thanks guys!