Boot Camp - Slow Startup
 

I've just loaded Snow Leopard onto a newly formatted drive and then installed Boot Camp.

Whenever I hold Alt at startup and then select Windows the computer seems to freeze for about a minute and then starts loading windows. While it is frozen I can't move the mouse cursor and nothing seems to be happening.

Is it normal for it to take so long?

Here's what it looks like...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2WuSJIrKmU

If you set the startup disk for Windows - and restart, is the boot time more to your liking?

Did you install the Boot Camp drivers from the Snow Leopard DVD?

I think the cursor won't move until much of Windows loads.

That did seem a little long. Have you also updated all the windows xp software? I Just did the same thing you did with my Macbook and I had 55 updates to windows. Also have you updated to service pack 3 with your xp?

Actually I haven't updated. The version I loaded is only SP2. Do you think that would be making it slow to actually start to load though?

Just the same unfortunately.

Yes the video was done after I had installed the Boot Camp drivers.

Any ideas?

1. Yes, forget Window$, and use your Mac as a Mac - :D

2. How fast do you want WinXP to be? Don't compare it to your Mac boot time. The Mac, especially with SL, will be significantly faster.

3. Update to SP3, if you haven't yet. Might not make a difference, but then you'll know.

4. check with someone else with a similar setup, maybe their experience is the same.

5. Did you use a Fat32, or NTFS as the format for the Boot Camp partition?

2. I want it to be as fast as what other ppl are getting for startup times.

3. Done. Still the same.

5. NTFS. I prefer it to Fat 32.

Have you installed the Boot Camp update for SP3?

Good point http://tsutton.site90.net/imgs/signature_smiley3.jpg

OK I have now tried erasing the BCamp partition and creating a new one with XP SP3.

As for the Boot Camp update for SP3 thing I'm not sure this is needed as from what I can see that was released April last year and the version I'm using came with the SL DVD last month.

Is this the one you are refering to?
http://tinyurl.com/63krm2

You're right. Snow Leopard includes Boot Camp 3.0.

When it asks for the partition to use, select the C: partition. Don't do anything else with it on that screen. The next screen will ask if you wish to format it. You can get away with leaving it alone (FAT32) or do a Quick Erase to NTFS. If you do the later, the drive will be read-only in Mac OS X. You can install NTFS-3G or the commercial package Tuxera NTFS

Thanks Las Vegas but I think I'm narrowing this down now.

I took the Mini to an Applestore Genius Bar and when we started it up there it was fast and started loading Windows in 7 seconds as against 40 seconds before. Bring it home and it's taking 40 seconds again.

The only difference that I can see is that at the shop the Airport bar on the lower part of the screen doesn't show up. And on the demonstrations that I have seen and the YouTube videos I have seen this is not there either.

So I suppose the question now is:-

Why is the Airport network bar coming up at home and not elsewhere and how do I stop it?

Have you setup Windows 7 to use your wireless network? Is it connecting properly?

Actually it's XP, and yes it connects fine to my wireless network. But that bar came up even before I had originally configured XP networking.

Sorry. I saw "Windows in 7 seconds" and my brain registered "Windows 7." :)

If you right-click (control-click) the airport bar, you should see a contextual menu for it. If there is an About… or Settings option, you should be able to find more information about it. Is it a 3rd party ap or part of Windows? Is there a way to at least temporarily turn it off for testing?

If Windows is launched with an ethernet cable attached, there a good chance that the Wireless will be disabled.

Either right clicking or left clicking makes no difference. A menu drops down and has the name "BOB" in it and the next line is for if I want to select a different wireless network. If I select BOB the screen slides to the side and there is a field where I can enter the password. If I select other network the screen slides to the side and I'm presented with two fields where I can select network name and password.

No about or settings available

It's a part of the Mac OS.

Nope...

Maybe but when I booted it at the genius bar there was no ethernet cable plugged in and this field didn't appear.


The funny thing is now that I think of it there is no network around here called BOB. When I boot into SL I can see a list of many other wireless networks but none of them are called BOB. Now that's strange!

The only thing that I can guess that it might be is that someone around here has one of these...
http://tinyurl.com/yzu8x6l

I was talking about the wireless bar in Windows, not Mac OS X.

How are you booting your Bootcamp partition? If you're booting through VMWare Fusion or Parallels, you're going to get a slow boot. While this does run natively, the hardware is emulated.

You should boot into Windows either through the Startup Disk preference pane or using the Option key on startup.

Oh, wireless bar in Windows? I'm not sure what that is. Once I've booted into Windows everything works OK and connects to my wireless network just fine.

But the problem appears before I actually get into Windows.

On the video I'm holding Option on startup and it's at that first screen where you get to select which drive to boot from that I'm seeing this strange bar that other people don't get.

You're actually seeing a Menubar when booted to the Firmware Bootloader? Hmmm... I've never seen that either. Perhaps you're computer is configured to NetBoot from Wifi? Or you have a netboot server on your WiFi network?

I finally got the answer from Apple. Their Engineering department provided the following...

"Scanning networks can add time to the picker process, depending on the number of networks found. There is no way to turn it off. Only MacBook Air and newer Mac mini support this feature."

So if like me you have one of these 2 Macs and there are a lot of wifi networks nearby then it will take a long time to boot and there is nothing that can be done about it.

Hi,
the same problem for me, I installed Windows 7 and Mountain Lion with bootcamp 4 on my mbp mid 2012 with SSD using rEFIt (I also tried without bootcamp, first)

after the rEFIt choice, the system waits about 90 seconds on a black screen (with a blinking cursor) and then windows starts quite fast, normally

I noticed this problems appeared during the windows 7 installation. The first boots to the installer were quite fast, and after x reboot during install, this black screen appears each time..

I've updated all the windows drivers with bootcamp support (I only had a msg that tells me that the usb 3.0 drivers couldn't be installed properly)

any ideas ?
thanks

manu

same black screen a startup for me, I found the solution :

if for some reasons windows didn't recognize the installed version as genuine, you can use the tool windows_loader made by Daz to fix the problem. I used version 2.1.7 and it works well with bootcamp.