The Dark Side of Boot Camp
July 21st, 2006I’ve noticed that some Mac dealers are now selling MacIntels with Windows bundles. Get the full experience of Boot Camp without having to set it up for yourself. I suppose that sounds convenient, but the same people who put packages together, such as MacMall, don’t forget to include the Boot Camp public beta terms and conditions in their catalogs and online sales pages.
In short, it’s a work in progress and don’t use it on a production computer. While most of you will find Boot Camp extremely reliable, take Apple at their word, especially after things go badly.
The other day, I was visiting a client who asked me to configure Boot Camp on his MacBook Pro back in April to allow him to run some specialty software that had no Mac equivalent. This was before Parallels Desktop had a stable beta, so I took what I regarded as the lesser of the two evils. In retrospect, maybe that wasn’t the best alternative.
Things worked fine for his modest needs until it stopped recognizing his shared printer a few days ago. I had configured Bonjour for Windows to simplify matters, and it suddenly began to report a permissions error of some sort when I tried to select one of his working printers. Nothing malfunction under 10.4.7, of course. Since Apple had released an updated version of Boot Camp, with unknown, unlisted fixes, I decided to generate a new Macintosh driver CD for him.
His fairly simple Windows XP Home configuration refused to recognize the CD, other than listing its title in the My Computer drive list. A second attempt at building a driver CD achieved the same unsatisfactory result. At the same time, I used the Windows Add/Remove feature to drive Bonjour out, and then downloaded and installed the latest version from Apple.
Welcome to the land of Windows voodoo, where things stop working as they should without rhyme nor reason. Under normal circumstances, it might have made sense to try a little troubleshooting, but since his environment was easily recreated, I opted to wipe the Windows partition with the Boot Camp Assistant, and then started the process all over again. To save time, I took the computer to my office, so it could do its thing in the background and I could concentrate on more productive activities.
The first Windows installation seemed to run all right, and the Mac driver setup seemed to proceed without a hitch, until I was asked to restart the computer. The restart failed, and I was left with one of those insidious Windows-based command line screens that gave me several restart options, including Safe Mode, and Safe Mode with various combinations of extra services, such as networking.
I tried each option, in turn, with no success, even the one that referred to the last known working configuration. Finally, I restarted with the Windows XP installation CD, the same one used for the original setup, and engaged in some command line legerdemain to repair the system. The steps included checking the drive, and a entering a few arcane commands that were designed to set things right again.
Gentle reader, please understand that I make no claims of being a Windows wizard. I can do just enough to be dangerous, and I’m sure many of you are able to offer solutions that I could have tried, didn’t know how to try and so on and so forth. But since I could be fully destructive here and not waste a great deal of time, I decided to make a second attempt to rebuild the Boot Camp partition.
First I went through a couple of steps to clean up the MacBook Pro with some Mac OS X maintenance utilities, and I even reset the power management unit. Apple officially states that “Over time, the settings in the Power Manager may become unusable, which can result in operational anomalies with the computer. Examples include not turning on, not waking from sleep, not charging the battery, or not recognizing the AC Adapter, among others.”
The lone symptom I noticed was the inability of the MacBook Pro to generate a proper startup chime. In any case, I did it anyway, and proceeded to reconfigure Boot Camp again. Again, I was looking less to save time than to reduce my direct intervention as much as possible. The second time was a charm. The installation went flawlessly, the Macintosh drivers loaded and subsequent restarts were uneventful. It didn’t take long to restore the client’s applications and settings, and it was able to access his shared printers and handle the other chores he required.
So what went wrong? Well, I won’t have an opportunity for a proper autopsy, except to say that Windows itself can be unpredictable, and malfunction for reasons that are not always understood. The client had robust malware protection in place, and it was configured to update on a daily basis. He had all the proper Microsoft security patches installed, so it probably wasn’t a virus and, besides, when I ran the Boot Camp Assistant during the troubleshooting session, I wiped the Windows partition clean; as it turned out, twice.
I suppose I could have induced the client to buy Parallels Desktop, which would perfectly suit his needs. But then I’d have to fight Microsoft’s lame customer support to reactivate Windows, since it would regard the virtual machine installation as an attempt to install Windows on a second PC. The last time I tried that, I wasted over an hour coping with disconnects and barely literate support people.
So was it Boot Camp and the perils of its beta status all along? That’s a mystery that I might ponder for the next five minutes, and then return to more productive matters.
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Kind of makes you wonder if the problem was related to Boot Camp, the Mac’s power manager or just a Windows glitch.
The fact is that computers and their operating system just have so many variables these days. One piece of errant code and its Blue Screen of Death or Kernel Panic city. My MacBook was giving kernel panics under heavy load, likely do to heat, and should be back from Apple today with a new logic board. My ThinkPad blue screens every second or third CD burn, but only in iTunes or Windows Media Player, never in Nero.
The MacBook’s issue was clearly hardware (my MacBook was one of the initial release batch) while the ThinkPad is clearly a software issue. Sadly the response to both for a busy person is the same, either take the time and/or expense to figure it out, or work around the issues. The MacBook went back to Apple only because I have other computers available to fill-in, while I simply don’t burn CDs on the ThinkPad until the MacBook comes back, at which time its fresh Windows install time.
I must disagree on the Parellels over Boot Camp vote however. I’ve played with both on my MacBook and while Parellels is far more convenient and is quite fast at processor tasks, it still isn’t a real PC. Boot Camp is the real deal, and with the Input Remapper utility (I forget the URL) it is a very good PC, with right click (FN+click or “delete”), the same function key settings for screen and volume as on Mac OS X (FN key required) and of course real native speed and accellerated graphics. Great stuff.
If I required Windows for a particular piece of software, I would buy the cheapest PC I could get by with and use that, rather than screw up a perfectly good Mac with Microsoft crap.
What you had was a windows problem, not a mac one. You needed to reformat the partition in question and completely reinstall windows. It was possible to fix without all that trouble, but it does illustrate one fine point. The Mac OS X side worked perfectly, the windows side died.
It also proves on other point. The Beverly Hillbillies move into a great neighborhood, and they still eat possum. Windows contained in a gold box still sucks.
Sad to say, but as an ex-Windows user, this kind of dance was my life for a good many years. I wasn’t the best Windows unriddler, but I was good enough to be tech support to all my friends and some of my co-workers. It’s just the way that Windows is and there’s nothing you can do about it.
As an ex-Windows user, i can tell I feel just like Poster…
” It’s just the way that Windows is and theres nothing you can do about it”.
Years ago, after my first mac (a 4400/200 mhz) I bought an PC (Windows 98) mainly because of games. I more or less thought my computerexperience would be just about the same. I could not be more wrong. What a mistake! What a mess this was. And why couldn’t I fix things myselve? I always ended up having to do a complete reinstall. Ater all that I was a faitfull macuser once again.
Right now I find myselve wanting to install windows on my mac to run some finance-apps. I have not yet installed BootCamp because I’m waiting for it to go out of beta. I have my hopes set on a possibily to ‘freeze’ or ‘write-protect/read-only’ possibility for the windows partition. Letting Leopard sort of ‘contain’ or protect Windows from itselve. What do you think? Would that be possible?
Yes, I love Windows’ Safe-mode. The register is even more fun. I toasted my step-dads old Toshiba desktop for good fiddling around with that. The good news was I convinced him to buy a Mac. Currently, he has a nicer one then me. (A Mac Book Pro) Damn him.
I would temporarily give up on Bootcamp. Parallels is out of Beta, go with that instead. As one poster said, it is true that it is not a “true PC.” I believe, however, most Mac users are not interested in running a true PC. They just want the convenience of running a Windows’ application occasionally. Personally I do not want to leave my Mac environment to do that. Moreover, Apple is promoting Parallels over Bootcamp. That should tell you something.
Do not flame me for this because I am not a grammar champ by any means. My grammar teacher parent, however, always picks on me for this, so I will pass this on to you. Take the advice or leave it.
Apple is a company. It exists independent of any people working for it. So it is not proper to say take Apple at “their” word. Apple is not a they, it is an it. Accordingly, it is take Apple at its’ word.
Thanks for the answer! Allright it loos like ‘Parrale’ for me. I will however wait what Leopard has in store for us. Better to wait a few days and know for sure what Apple will bring. By the way: Why would I flame you for providing an answer? 😉
interesting article, but you seem a bit too hasty to write your troubles off with the predictable and unscientific excuse of ‘oh its just windows being cRaZy!’.
more likely, these are issues with boot camp which will hopefully be resolved when it gets out of beta. basically, if you want a stable windows XP install i would avoid apple’s boot camp for the time being.