black screen when booting up bootcamp

i seem to be getting a bsod (black screen of death) when i boot into bootcamp sometimes. its just pitched black and wont progress at all. has anyone experienced this problem before? (doesnt happen all the time, just sometimes).

btw, im running winxp sp2 on a 20gb partition.

 

Just to clarify, this is what a Mac "black screen of death" looks like:



So yeah, it doesn't seem to be this. I don't know why it would do that...

 

I'm not sure what you mean. Is the screen completely black or do you see the Safe Boot menu?



From <noparse>Apple</noparse> Support, Boot Camp 2.0: Video issues with Windows Vista or XP. Or try drivers from LaptopVideo2Go. Read the instructions in the Quickstart Guide.

And try defragmenting your Windows partition.

 

He says its "pitch black and wont progress at all". So the screen is totally black and will not progress, and this only happens every once in awhile. Hmm... that sounds familiar. Let me guess, this occurs whenever you restart and boot into bootcamp correct? It will not occur if you power it on the first time into bootcamp correct? Looks like you have an overheating issue. Happens a lot with my computer as well.

I recommend getting a temperature reading software. On windows I use speedfan, but I do not know what the best for Mac is... check with Sam . Get the software and use it to view your system temperatures.

Let me know if that was the problem and let us know so that we can help you fix your issue. Hope that helped.

 

Do you have Leopard and have you installed the new bootcamp drivers?

If not, try that. It should work.

 

yup stunner got it right on the dot. if i boot up directly into bootcamp all is fine, when i restart from leopard and boot into bootcamp, at times its just pitch black. then if i reboot completely from a black screen, i get the picture xander has. if its an overheating issue, is it with the gpu or computer as a whole?

 

computer as a whole

 

Sounds like a memory issue, try downloading and booting Microsoft memory test, you might have a bad stick of ram that OS X doesn't have a problem with that xp might.

 

Guys, its an overheating issue. Get a temperature monitoring software so that you can view your temperatures and tell us what temperature your computer is running at before your restart into boot camp. You may want to consider getting a notebook cooler, or for the time being, elevate your laptop so that there can be some ventilation on the underside of it. Sticking a fan beside it would help too.

Overheating issues generally have to do with the computer as a whole but primarily affect the GPU, that is why I believe the system freezes up when the GPU gets too hot. So test out my hypothesis and check and see if this only occurs when the temperatures are high.

 

On occasion my bootcamp will boot, but stay at a black screen for a bit. I'll randomly hit a key (like space or enter) and a second later it will be in windows.

 

On occasion, my Bootcamp won't work at all. I'll click the Windows XP boot drive (after holding the OPTION key), and it won't leave that screen at all! Just frozen with the Leopard/Windows XP options sitting there. Very weird, but it only happens maybe once every 20 boots. A hard reboot and it boots next time.

 

I think that is generally related to temperature. When that happens to my computer, I just shut it down, let it cool for 5 - 10 mins then boot it up again and it works fine. This is not a software issue.

 

i have smcfancontrol in leopard...and usually when i reboot to boot into bootcamp, the cpu/gpu is not higher than 60C. doesnt that seem a bit too cool to be overheating?

 

Yeah, that does seem really cool. But also try booting directly into windows and check them temperature when you boot into windows using speedfan or smcfancontrol (if its available for windows) and try to determine at what temperature your computer won't let you restart. Even restarting should cause the same type of behavior. So try restarting at a high temp and see if it still occurs.

This generally doesn't happen to my computer unless it is around 70C, but to be honest there have been several instances where my computer is in the low 60s and it freezes up.