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daneel · Sep 13, 2007, 07:46 PM

ive a got a new Alu iMac (about 2-3 weeks old). ive tried to install boot camp on it 4 times so far. ive ran into various problems -

1. Installed and run boot camp Vista
but i had created too small a partition. i realized this too late and had to trash this install.

2. Installed Vista and ran (once)
the initial boot and install (including the several restarts) went absoltely fine. i booted in one more time. while booting a got a lot of random MS error messages but this happened the first time too so i just ignored it and it booted just fine. next time onwards, when i try to boot vista i just get the blank grey screen and a 2min timeout restart. if i use the alt button then it still gets stuck at the grey screen.

so i trashed this one too. i posted my problem on the apple discussions site. no one seems to have an exact answer.

3. tried (and failed) to install vista
now i cant even get the install started. the same problem which i had for the OS above now applies even for the boot cd of windows. grey screen and stuck or select boot device and stuck.

i really need to install windows on this machine. one of the main reasons i bought a high-end mac was so that i could use mac os for normal use and still have windows for my gaming needs.

help me out . . .

ghporter · Sep 13, 2007, 08:12 PM

Back up all the way. Use the Boot Camp Utility to delete the Windows partition. Boot the machine from your OS X DVD and select Disk Utility from the Tools menu, then highlight the entire drive (NOT just a volume on the drive) and tell it to repair the drive. Reboot and start Boot Camp over again.

You HAVE created that Boot Camp driver disc, right? If not, don't go anywhere near installing the Windows OS until you do. You'll be happy you took the time.

daneel · Sep 13, 2007, 09:51 PM

so its a disk problem eh ?

i have made the drivers disc (should be appparent from the fact that i said i installled and ran windows fine the 1st time round).

can you recommend any backup software. it should be able to backup my applications, preferences, files (music, video, etc). someone told me to use carbon copy cloner, but i think it does only the whole drive.

daneel · Sep 14, 2007, 07:16 AM

nope. not a hard disk problem. i booted from the OS X install cd like you said. at first the repair disk and verify disk options were grayed out. then i booted back into my computer and removed the unused boot camp partition with the assistant. then booted with the install disc once again; repair disk worked this time but after running it said there was nothing to repair. booted back into os x, ran boot camp assistant and tried again. same problem as before. i just cannot get it to boot of a windows disc or partition.

ghporter · Sep 14, 2007, 08:31 AM

Is the Vista disc squeaky-clean? Did you go through every step exactly as the instructions say? It SHOULD work; I have installed XP on my 20" aluminum iMac and it was pretty much trivial, so I know that Boot Camp itself works fine. Since you've gone through the whole route of making sure your hard drive is ok, then that means the drive (or an error on it) is the problem. That leaves your media as a potential culprit.

daneel · Sep 15, 2007, 03:42 AM

well, after a whole week of struggling around with various soltions from the MacNN forums and apple discussions site, i've hit upon the problem quite by accident. Its PERIPHERALS.

i have an external dvd writer and a printer always connected to my mac. For some strange reason, windows (OS or install disc) will not load if these are connected. i disconnected them during boot time and now everything is working just fine.

this should be added to the official documentation or some other way to make a new user aware of it. does apple have an equivalent of bugzilla for linux ? is there any way that we can make a request fo this to go on the documentation ?

ghporter · Sep 15, 2007, 04:19 AM

Yes, Windows installers have serious problems when anything other than a keyboard and mouse are connected during install. Windows does some interesting things with USB during a normal boot. The installer is even more interesting about what it does, and it apparently tries to match peripherals to built-in drivers even during the installation, which sometimes hangs the install and other times messes it up thoroughly.

There IS an item on this in one of the stickies in this forum, but it may not be terribly obvious because it doesn't state "won't install because of USB devices." And it's in the Boot Camp documentation, but again, not terribly boldly.

Whatever, I'm glad you're up and running.