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malexandria · Sep 26, 2006, 08:59 AM

Hello,

Before I go postal and take a hammer to my Macbook Pro. I tried installing Bootcamp
yesterday and everything seemed to be going ok, but then when I got to the XP (sp 2) install screen where it prompts you to hit the enter button to continue installation. My keyboard
seems frozen. Is there a different keyboard button I should be hitting instead of the enter or F2 buttons? Nothing appears to be working, not even the caps or num lock
buttons. Now because it's stuck in this state, I can't even get it to boot back into
OS X, I'm getting a boot disk error message and it's not recognizing the
Macbook Pro rescue disks.

I'm new to the Mac platform and so far I despise it, but I want to make
this MacBook Pro work since I'm stuck with it and the weasels at the Apple store
refuse to honor their return policy. So, I'm out of $2,700 and now I'm staring
at a boot disk error message. Any help would be much appreciated.

thanks

WOPR · Sep 26, 2006, 09:38 AM

When you say it's not recognising the OS X disks what exactly is it doing?

WOPR · Sep 26, 2006, 09:39 AM

What do you mean about them refusing to honour the return policy exactly?

malexandria · Sep 26, 2006, 10:48 AM

When I say not recognizing the disk, it's just that. It starts up and insists on
looking for the XP Bootable Disk now and when I tried to install the rescue disk,
it didn't "recognize" and still insisted on booting to the Windows install disk. The
error message is "no bootable disk available."

As far as the return policy goes, I purchased it about four weeks ago. After I got
home and played with it for a day, I realized that I wanted an iMac instead, so I took
it back to the Apple Store and they refused to return it, claiming there was a small
dent in the machine. Which until this day I still don't see and if it was there, it was
already like that - I had it for less than a day and a half. The crummy manager then
took on that "holier than thou," Mac attitude - that ticks me off. Saying, there's
"no possible way," that they sold me a machine that was "defective." I was so
LIVID. Another Apple store pulled this crap when a friend purchased an 60 gig
iPod for me as a X-Mas present, it stopped working 3 days after I got it and I took
it back with a receipt. And the store refused to look at it because it was ingraved -
even though Apple did the engraving and pushed it.

I'm thinking about getting a 24 inch, iMac having bootcamp professionally installed, and selling my Macbook Pro (assuming I can get it to work) on eBay. But one thing is
for sure, I will NEVER to another Apple store. If I purchase the iMac it'll be from Amazon
or MacMall or someplace like that.

Big Mac · Sep 26, 2006, 11:00 AM

Sorry you've had such a bad experience. And I agree with you - it's a better idea to buy from a dedicated Apple retailer with a good reputation (if you have one in your area) than the Apple Store. Good retailers will good further to help their customers than will Apple.

WOPR · Sep 26, 2006, 11:42 AM

Have you tried holding down the option key when it boots up so you can select OS X ? Or hold down C with the OS X disk in?

malexandria · Sep 26, 2006, 12:06 PM

I'll try that when I get home, I don't know any of the apple keyboard tricks

malexandria · Sep 26, 2006, 12:55 PM

as an update, I just ordered an 20inch Core2 iMac with Parallels and Windows XP pre-installed. So if I can get my Macbook Pro working, I can sell that on ebay and not take
too much of a financial hit. The reason I'm getting a Mac is because of the
hardware, not the software. It's been my experience that XP Pro is more stable
and easier to use than OS X, but from a hardware standpoint Apple makes great
Hardware and my PC has been driving me crazy. So I'm getting the Mac and will
run Premiere Pro 2.0 for my Video Editing Solution and Podcast Factory for
my RSS work and probably Garage band for my Audio Podcasts. But for video I really don't like any of apple's tools.

ghporter · Sep 26, 2006, 03:58 PM

While I think your experience with OS X has not been representative, I am glad you have found a course of action that will get you what you need.

Now, let's work on this MBP issue... Starting with using the option key (which is labeled "alt" on the keycap) to get to the boot selector.

malexandria · Sep 27, 2006, 08:46 AM

Thanks for all your help, I was able to get it to boot using the alt key and once I got in,
I used bootcamp to reset the partician to it's original state, so everything works now. My follow up question is, how do I prevent the keyboard from freezing when I try to
install Windows. I tried using Parallels and Bootcamp everything seems to go fine, but then my keyboard freezes so I'm not able to install or do anything.