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Boot Camp Flaw Leaves Some Users Fuming
Karl Cocknozzle writes "Some users who chose to install Apple's recent beta-offering of Boot Camp without basic precautions (like a full backup) have found themselves unable to boot their Macs to OS X. In a discussion thread on Apple's technical support Web site, more than a dozen users reported that Boot Camp successfully partitioned their hard drive and allowed them to install a working version of Windows, but then would no longer allow them to switch back. The download-agreement page for Boot Camp contains the explicit warning that Boot Camp is still 'Beta' software, and would not be supported if problems arose. On the whole, it sounds like the number of affected users is quite small, but may reflect a common lack of knowledge of what a 'beta' release really is: Not ready for prime-time."
What a way to welcome users to Windows, with an introduction to our friend, Fdisk, as in now your disk is 'f'ed!
Anyhow, it is unfortunate, and hopefully it will be fixed shortly.
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I wonder how many of them simply didn't read the instructions that say "Hold Option/Alt down during boot up to switch". I know my boot camp defaults to windows. Minor problem easily overcome.
This is easily every mac user's worst nightmare.
Turning on your shiny new iMac to see it boot into windows no matter what you do.... the horror!
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Wow! I am like TOTALLY SHOCKED that something that Apple says is *beta* and that they refuse to, at this time, provide technical support for, is buggy!
After reading this thread, I was totally amazed at how many of the people didn't bother to back up their disk before installing something that alters your system's hard disk partitions. Duh. What do you expect?
My blog
At least with these guys they have the option of doing an erase and install to restore their software to the way it was before. Some people are not able to boot their computers any more without using the firmware restore CD.
Please, please, please, before trying this type of stuff, RTFM...
One of these days i'm going to find this 'peer' guy and reset HIS connection!
Really, this is Google's fault for releasing a series of very well understood, usable, secure, nearly flawless applications all under the "Beta" name!
Karl Cocknozzle writes: ...common lack of knowledge of what a 'beta' release really is: Not ready for prime-time.
I take it Karl doesn't work for google?
:wq
I just got my Intel iMac yesterday, and I installed Boot Camp and Windows on it. I am willing to be that what happened was these users didn't know what they were doing. When you use Boot Camp to install XP, Windows exposes the entire partition table when you are installing, which includes a couple of small system partitions. Chances are these users didn't understand that those partitions were necessary and they deleted them while they were installing Windows. It's not Windows' fault, it's ID10T error.
We're obviously going to hear a lot of that
A more interesting question: Is Google to blame?
Before everyone jumps on me, I mean this: Most people don't know the history of the term 'beta'... so their first exposure to it is through Google (where it is primarily used as a marketing term). To most people, in its context, it is just interpreted as 'new'.
To most people, does beta now just mean 'new'?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I find that generally if you install Windows first, then it works out of the box. It's Windows that is the unfriendly one about overwriting boot sectors changing partitions and screwing around with things it shouldn't (although this probably makes it easier if all you want to run is Windows).
I also never put my (multi)bootloader on the master boot record because Windows kills that any time you do an install. It's better to put it on another partition and then set that partition to be bootable.
KNOPPIX CD's and similar are a great help for fixing a dorked up install.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Someone should go to their door and kick them squarely in the nuts for being idiots.
It's BETA folks, means it might break things. Back up your data if you absolutely must play with it.
Hell, back up your data anyway.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
There is a big difference though. The issue with dual booting is usually either:
a)Windows overwrote the MBR and doesn't know how to boot any other OS
b)Linux or other bootmanager overwrote MBR and doesn't know how to boot windows (this is far less common nowadays but we all remember when it was huge problem)
or
c)You chose to install the linux boot manager NOT in the MBR, and the windows boot manager in the MBR takes precedent, so you reboot and go right in to windows.
With Boot Camp this is different, apple is emulating BIOS inside their own EFI boot manager, so the windows bootloader has no chance of ever affecting the OS X install. This is a bug in apples boot software that is affecting apples OS, not some other OS's software affecting another OS.
It happened to a friend of mine. He purchased a HFS+ driver for Windows (Mac Drive). Upon installing the driver, he managed to mount the Mac partition under Windows and recover his personal files.
I wonder how many of them simply didn't read the instructions that say "Hold Option/Alt down during boot up to switch". I know my boot camp defaults to windows. Minor problem easily overcome.
From reading the posts at the Apple discussion forums, it looks like the problem has something to do with the partitioning and/or a corrupted swapfile.
OK, I'll grant that some mac users are as dumb as you are implying, but if you read the thread I posted above, you'll see that not all of the people with this problem are complete idiots.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
It's no wonder people are confused. Beta doesn't seem to mean "testing" any longer, it just means great product with a greek letter attached. Or at least that is what I have learned by surfing around at Google.
I just installed the Boot camp yesterday and have Windows on a Mac Mini. Part of that process required me to resize Mac OSX partition to make room for the Windows partition. Then it takes me to the Windows installer which has to format the new partition (Boot Camp doesn't do it) to Fat32 or NTFS before installtion can begin. The windows installer displays the partitions on the disc but it can differentiate the Mac OSX partion from the one for Windows. So, if someone split the drive down the middle during Boot Camp, he/she won't be able to recognized the right partition and they can easily reformat the one with Mac OSX. My suggestion is to partition the drive with two that are of unequal size. Use that to identify the drive during installation.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
I have no experience beyond my own installation, but the steps were to update the firmware, partition, then install. Each step is possibly disasterous, but the install was what almost got me. Good thing I've done more than one XP installation in the past. You know how the XP installation goes, if there's no XP/NTFS-ish partition, the XP installer asks which partition you want to reformat. My Mac Partition showed up highlighted, and not the new XP partition. The new XP partition was all the way at the bottom of the list of partitions. I ALMOST hit return and almost destroyed my MacOS X installation! I can see how a lot of people would make that same mistake. My problem, therefore, was really with the Windows installer, and my own lack of careful reading.
I was installing Boot Camp on my MacBook. And it was, like, "beep beep beep beep beep".
....
... a bummer.
And then, like, half my operating systems were gone. And I was, like,
It was a really good operating system, you know?
So I had to install OS X all over again.
It was, kinda
I'm Ellen Fleiss, and I'm an early adopter.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
You mean like the big heading "Boot Camp Public Beta" at the top of the page?
Or are you talking about the first paragraph in the install guide which is highlighted and says:
Warning: Boot Camp Beta is preview software licensed for use on a trial basis for a limited time. Do not use Boot Camp Beta in a commercial operating environment or with important data. You should back up all of your data before installing this software and regularly back up data while using the software. Your rights to use Boot Camp Beta are subject to acceptance of the terms of the software license agreement that accompanies the software.
Bold mine except the word "Warning" which was both bold, a different color and italicized.
Really? As opposed to any other *nix distros that uses lilo or grub? Or do you mean that you DO NOT have to install Windows first THEN your other non-windows operating systems? Curious what makes SuSE stand out in this instance. Windows has always been a pain in regard to playing nice with anything non-windows it touches - and this isn't a group think /. moronic troll, just the simple truth...Like installing Windows AFTER you have some other OS installed.
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
Once you go windows you never go back.
I can throw a one hundred thousand pound walrus right through a brick wall.
It sounds from the article like it doesn't lose data. The complaining users are saying things like this:
There's no data loss here. He can restore the system using the commandline but won't because he refuses to learn. He shouldn't be using beta software.
Your college definition of beta is oversimplified, anyway:
hm. i thought it was
:)
Backup
Everything
Then
Apply.
that's always worked for me
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree