BootCamp/SP1 White Screen of Death: A Solution
Like I mentioned in my previous post, I did end up fixing my iMac after the mistake of using a Service Pack 1 installation disc of Windows XP instead of a Service Pack 2 disc. I also managed to do this without a single trip to the Apple store, and without erasing my hard drive. Here’s how I did it.
Disclaimer: This guide is a combination of two tutorials I have read regarding the subject, each somewhat different, but taking the useful parts of each to create a better solution. I am writing this guide to see if I can help others in a similar situation, however I cannot be responsible for anything that happens as a result of it. All I can say is that this worked for me, and you should consider your options before trying anything.
The Situation:
- You recently used a service pack 1 disc of Windows XP with BootCamp on Leopard.
- When your computer restarts, your screen is white/blank; nothing happens except Apple noise when turned on.
- You have no real options to do anything; aka booting from disc, single user mode, disc selection, etc.
- Upon restart and holding the option key, you see your mouse, but the computer freezes shortly after.
If your situation sounds like this, hopefully this might be of help to you.
Needed Supplies:
- A FireWire (iLink) cable. (Male to Male connector; I used 6-pin version, bought at MicroCenter for about $20)
- Another (working) Mac with Leopard and a FireWire port. (Hopefully this isn’t hard to find for you… Maybe ask some friends? I’ve also read about people who have used an External Harddrive that connects through FireWire with Leopard installed on it)
- A really great program called TestDisk. (Use from the working computer; You can find this program here, and don’t worry, it’s free.)
That should be all you need. When you’re ready, cautiously being the steps below.
What to Do:
- Turn off both the working and non-working computers.
- Turn the working computer on while holding the T-key. If successful, you should see the FireWire symbol floating around the screen, indicating that you are in Target Disc Mode.
- Now turn on the non-working computer, and hold the Option-key. After a few seconds you should see your mouse and an icon that Idenitifies the other computer’s connection to you. Quickly click that icon before your computer freezes! (Both the Icon and the arrow beneath it I’d say) (Also, don’t worry just yet if nothing shows up except the mouse when you restart holding Option-key. The same thing happened to me, but just keep trying it over and over until you see it.)
- Once you’ve clicked it however many times and the computer has frozen, turn off the non-working computer and restart it once more. The computer should boot up using the hard drive of the working computer!
- When your computer logs in, it will say that there is a “DIsk that cannot be read” and give you the options to Initialize, Ignore or Eject. Choose Ignore. (This is your non-working harddrive FYI)
- Navigate to Applications->Utilities->Terminal and open Terminal.
- You should have downloaded TestDisk as mentioned in the supplies list (if not, download it now!), so you must change directories to the TestDisk directory in Terminal.
Type cd followed by a space, and drag the downloaded TestDisk directory onto the terminal. Press Enter/Return. If that worked, you should be in the TestDisk directory. - Now you must begin TestDisk.
Type sudo ./testdisk - TestDisk should now be opened. If you need to, make the terminal window bigger like it says.
You’ll be given a few options… - Choose “Create” for the log file.
- Select your HardDrive. (Typically /dev/disk0)
- Choose “EFI_GPT”
- Choose “Analyse”
- Choose “Quick Search”
- It’ll now be searching and will show progress and such; wait for it to complete. When it’s done, check the listed partitions for accuracy.
You should have one labeled EFI (about 200MB in size), one labeled BOOTCAMP, and one for for Mac that’s the largest.
If that’s correct and you feel confident about it, press enter to continue. - Choose “Write” and follow any instructions. This will write your hard drive partition map.
- End the TestDisk program. (Quit)
When I quit the program, my drives were on my Desktop. (Macintosh HD, EFI, and BOOTCAMP) If yours aren’t, I would try using TestDisk again. - Shut down the non-working computer, and then turn off the other one that’s connected through FireWire and remove the cable connecting them.
- Start up the non-working machine, and it should work alright now and startup. (At least that’s how mine was)
- When you turn on the computer and login, you’ll notice the other two disks (EFI and BOOTCAMP) are on your Desktop as well as Macintosh HD. (Optional) To fix this, I just opened up Disk Utility (Applications->Utilities), selected my hard drive, went to the Partition tab, and hit the - (Minus) button for the EFI and BOOTCAMP drives. I then dragged my “Macintosh HD” partition’s bottom-right corner to fill the whole space.
And there you have it. If you’ve followed everything and you’ve gotten your Mac back in working condition, then congratulations!
Credits: Thanks to Dave (Euphoria922) from the Apple support forum for the majority of the technical steps mentioned in this article (original post here) and to the various other people who wrote the posts that I did my research on.
Hi, Thanks for this article!
I followed it and Mac OS is happy again.
However, my bootcamp assistant is no complaining that the drive cannot be used to create a bootcamp partition…
Have you experienced this? Any thoughts?
Thanks, bastiaan
Yeah, I experienced that also Bastiaan. To be honest, I’m not sure why Bootcamp Assistant says that, but my guess is that maybe BootCamp thinks that there’s still an installation there (or it’s prepared for an installation to be there). Personally, after this whole incident I have no desire to use Bootcamp again (I just use Parallels), but I’d recommend getting some other opinions if you really need to use Bootcamp. There’s two other things I’ve noticed since I fixed the hard drive partition on my computer, one of which is that MySQL doesn’t work anymore (which I can live with) but I haven’t tried re-installing it yet, so maybe that might work. The other is when I try to install the latest Firmware EFI update that was released recently, it gives an error code and says it cannot update it. I’m not really sure why, but I’m not certain it’s related to the Boocamp incident because I searched around and many others are having the same problem without even using Bootcamp.
I’m glad the article helped! Good luck with Bootcamp!
i need help and y d ont have anoter mac or bootable firewire disk….y have only another windows pc???????/
I had the same thing happen to me and was trying to go through these steps to fix my computer, but after step 4, I get a message that says “You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.” - I tried turning off the nonworking computer and restarting, but I get the same grey screen I was originally getting. I tried doing the same on the working computer, but every time I repeat steps 1-4, I never get the message in step 5 that says “Disk cannot be read” - I simply get the “You need to restart your computer message.” Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
@Raoulik: I’m sorry, I don’t think this will work without another Mac or External HardDrive with OSX on it (the same version of OSX that the broken one has).
@Ameet: Which computer gives that message? Does the non-working computer successfully enter Target Disc Mode with the working computer?
The nonworking computer gives me that message - it seems like it successfully goes into Target Disc Mode with the working computer, but just as it’s booting up, I get the restart computer message, so I get stuck there.
Hi Mike,
Thanks so much for this guide! I was worried I had lost everything, but followed your steps and was able to restore my drive.
As a side note - I was able to use a slightly modified version of the steps in order to restore the drive without the need for a second Mac or a firewire cable. Instead, I copied TestDisk onto a USB key. I then used the Leopard install disk to boot, and used the Terminal from there to access the USB key.
The only hitch is that you need a copy of /usr/share/terminfo on the USB key (can easily be obtained from a working Mac) in order to TestDisk to run. I just copied those files from another Mac to the same directory as TestDisk on the USB key. Worked like a charm.
Thanks again!
JayZee
I had this issue a couple of months back, thanks a bunch for the post on how to rectify it!
Will reinstalling OSX let me use bootcamp again? I only want to run MS Flight Sim. Nothing else on Windows gains my interest.
hi, i\\\’ve tried to boot the non-working computer into target mode, multiple times. both by holding down \\"t\\" on startup and by pressing option. When I hold down \\"option\\" on startup i don\\\’t get to choose the target drive, nothing but the mouse cursor shows up. I\\\’ve tried this many times and still only get the mouse cursor. - Any ideas?
Haha. I was assisting my friend over the phone in installing windows when this happened to him. I have been searching for the answer to this problem and now I know how to fix his computer. Lol. Now we can get his computer up and running. Thank you.
I ran the above steps but when i get to the point to analyze the disk it tells me its write protected or read only and then after it runs the test it wont let me write the partition table.
says Partition: Write error
any suggestions? can this be anything but a bad drive? thanks for the guide though.
@Chromaddict: I’m really not sure.. I hope you are able to find a solution though, and good luck!
Thank you for posting this. On Sunday I decided to set my clock back and try to install XP SP1 using Bootcamp Beta and ran into this issue. DO NOT DO THIS! The Apple geniuses did not know what to do at the Apple store so they just replaced my hard drive and were going to give me my old one to take to someone for data recovery (stupidly, I hadn’t backed up for several weeks). I found your instructions, and forwarded them to the Apple genius, and he kindly follwed them and recovered my drive and data. Your instructions really were a life saver for me–thank you, thank you, thank you so much for posting this. You rock.
@Neil: I’m so glad this was helpful for you! That’s great, and I’m very happy you got everything saved!