Filed under: OS, Switchers, Bad Apple, Beta Beat
Boot Camp leaves some iMac users in the dark
There are corners of the Apple support discussion forums that make you want to dress in black and sit in your room with all the lights off. The current cry for techno-Zoloft is in some forlorn threads regarding iMac 24" boxes that fail to display anything in Windows, a symptom dubbed the "Black Screen of Death." The internal display stays black after installing the Boot Camp drivers, which is understandably frustrating for the owners of these (otherwise normal, at least in Mac OS X) finely engineered machines. Since Boot Camp is unsupported, from an Apple perspective these machines aren't broken at all. Won't you please help? No operators are standing by...While I sympathize with this plight, having spent a couple of days struggling with a 20" iMac that refused to light up when booted into XP (eventual solution: remove half the RAM, reboot, reinstall RAM. Cutting head off of chicken and sprinkling holy water optional), I have to wonder if we're doing ourselves a service when we buy Macs with the express purpose of running Windows on them full-time.
I know of shops that are doing this -- I'm doing it at the day job -- but there is a fairly substantial degree of uncovered-behindness in the deployment of a beta solution with an OS unsupported on the hardware and no promise (until Leopard at least) of any help from the Motherfruit. In a sense, this is where someone running Linux on Dell gear is sitting -- fine as long as everything works, then out of luck when it doesn't.
Should Apple support XP, to the point of swapping hardware under warranty if it won't boot Windows but works fine in OS X? Let us know your thoughts.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ivan Ruiz said 3:57PM on 12-17-2006
This is coming from an iMac 24" owner with the "Black Screen of Death", Apple should at least acknowledge that there is an issue. But by not addressing that there is a problems, and stating the "Beta Clause" is not very comforting either. I know for money issues they wont swap out hardware. I have personally installed Boot camp on 5 iMac 24", and all have worked flawlessly. Reason, later builds. I happen to jump on the first bandwagon, and I'm paying the price. So I hope they just fix the issue already or even acknowledge it. Come on Apple do the right thing..
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uros643 said 10:01PM on 12-19-2006
oh, so that must be why that 24" imac at the apple store didn't want to boot into XP when bootcamp was clearly installed...
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Konstantino said 4:14PM on 12-17-2006
That's awfully strange; what could have caused it? Guess I'm lucky I only have a 17 incher.
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Jason said 4:42PM on 12-17-2006
I hate reading news like this - personally, anytime I go near Windows something bad happens. Last time, I installed the Parallels Beta and all of my home directories were wiped out.
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jopari said 4:59PM on 12-17-2006
my guess is that it's another problem with the display drivers-every time i tried to install the drivers on my macbook (xp or vista) the program would crash. sounds to me like the program thinks it has installed the new drivers and tries to use them when in reality it hasn't. i guess that's one problem with making computers with odd size displays-how many 13.3" and 24"(non-widescreen) computers are there out there?
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Sonyc said 5:24PM on 12-17-2006
Same 24" here, same problem. Not a word from Apple. Bad. Too bad.
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guuud said 6:32PM on 12-17-2006
Just plug in an ordinary vga screen and finish the instalation on it. As soon as you have installed the drivers you can work with the internal monitor again.
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Michael Katz said 6:44PM on 12-17-2006
jopari....what are you talking about claiming the imac 24 inch isn't widescreen? that's a widescreen monitor...just because the computer case is square....that doesn't mean the monitor isn't.
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Michael Katz said 6:47PM on 12-17-2006
Oh and jopari it's not the size of the monitor that matters, it's the resolution that truly matters.....each monitor can only handle a set resolution as it's limit. I have a 19 inch that maxes out at 1280X1024. My powerbook maxes out at 1280X800 or so...same as the macbook 13.3 inch, and it's a 15 inch. Monitor size means nothing, it's all about the resolutions supported. By the sound of things it's more related to the internal video card.....possibly a physical address (IRQ) conflict.
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robotplague said 7:03PM on 12-17-2006
I am using a 24" imac right now using bootcamp. In fact, I use windows everyday on this machine and I will until a native version of cs3 comes out. I've installed/uninstalled in a few times and it works like a champ. Do some of them work while others don't? Did I do something different?
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Michael Rose said 7:14PM on 12-17-2006
Hi all --
Apple rep recommended to me that anyone experiencing this submit a report via the Boot Camp feedback form, linked on http://www.apple.com/bootcamp
robotplague: Yes, the issue is not endemic to all 24" iMacs, a subset of machines (possibly with a particular SMC config) are affected.
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rickster said 8:35PM on 12-17-2006
iMac 24" owners - have you _ever_ had anything attached to the video out of your iMacs via either the DVI or VGA adapter?
i think guuud is right - in my case, i found boot camp -based launches turning up on the external display vs the integrated one.
(even Parallels does it)
could never figure out why - and now run with a second at all times, so it's not so much an issue.
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Likkie said 12:57AM on 12-18-2006
I also have a 24"iMac with the dreaded black screen of death problem.
It is the price I pay for being an early adopter. I understand that.
What I don't understand is Apple's failure to even acknowledge the problem.
I don't even care about running Windows on my Mac. I don't need to and I don't want to on an ongoing basis. I only tried out the Boot Camp thing as matter of interest. Come the release of Leopard, however, I expect everything to operate as advertised or have it replaced/fixed.
Apple's poor attitude has made me angry about a broken function that I don't even want.
One day we early adopter's are all going to learn the lesson and wait for version 2, then after an Apple product launch the silence will be deafening at the cash registers.
Cheers,
Likkie.
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Squiggle said 6:50AM on 12-20-2006
I've come across from the XP world... I now own a 24" Core2Duo iMac, but Bootcamp isn't going on my machine until it comes out of beta and final production code. That way I actually get support.
The software is beta and not production quality (yet), anyone who assumes otherwise really needs their head read.
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harald said 4:31AM on 12-18-2006
strange - no problems here on my 24" imac core2duo:
http://gallery.triptop.net/v/apple/DSCF0248.JPG.html
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Fine Print said 10:03AM on 12-18-2006
From the Boot Camp software license agreement:
IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS IS BETA, TIME-LIMITED SOFTWARE MEANT FOR EVALUATION PURPOSES ONLY. THIS SOFTWARE SHOULD NOT BE USED IN A COMMERCIAL OPERATING ENVIRONMENT OR WITH IMPORTANT DATA. BEFORE INSTALLING THE APPLE SOFTWARE, YOU SHOULD BACK UP ALL OF YOUR DATA AND REGULARLY BACK UP DATA WHILE USING THE APPLE SOFTWARE.
I'm not trying to rub it in ... but you can't say Apple didn't warn you in advance. =) It's even right at the top of the license; they didn't bury it. Personally, I'm surprised at how stable this "beta" has been for me.
As for Apple supporting XP, hell no! They didn't develop it, so why should they fix it? If Adobe's software starts engulfing Macs in flames (think Photoshop filter gone wild), isn't that Adobe's problem to fix?
Of course, Apple should support Boot Camp … once it's RTM. I'm sure they're busy debugging the "killer feature" mobile capabilities of Leopard (OS X Mobile, whee) ... just speculating, of course. =)
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Jon B. said 1:39PM on 12-18-2006
You can run bootcamp with an external monitor, but never can you use the internal. This applies to a few lonely imac users who got earlier imacs. (I waited quite a bit, I guess I got an older one that had been sitting around.)
Trying to do necessary functions on an additional external monitor sitting on the same desk as your 24" seems rather ridiculous. It's extra room - and not what I want to be doing at all.
In addition, I had sales reps TELL ME that bootcamp would work. It's why I went with mac in the first place. I wanted osx, but the ability to boot into windows when I had the necessity to. And I can't.
Apple acknowledges nothing, and we're left in the dark. Don't give a beta excuse - give us something to hold on to. Will it ever be fixed? Is there hope with leopard? Say SOMETHING. Firmware? When? Ever? Gaming is impossible. Certain programs are impossible because they're windows only or are still not native intel applicable, so they don't run at full speed (or with other applications open.)
It's bs.
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Zoaky said 6:19AM on 12-19-2006
"I'm not trying to rub it in ... but you can't say Apple didn't warn you in advance. =) It's even right at the top of the license; they didn't bury it. Personally, I'm surprised at how stable this "beta" has been for me."
Yeah, But they didn't warn me that my iMac would somehow differ from other's... I purchased this iMac so I could do away with my IBM PC & guess what? Its still there & will be for sometime by the looks of it.
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sad pony geurilla boy said 3:39AM on 2-22-2007
I have the exact same problem I just argued with apple corporate for 2 days over it. I stated that i was lead to believe that this machine will run windows xp and moc osx. Even there comercials advertise it. This is completely fraudulent on apple's part. They refuse to admit anything and hide behind a beta clause. But how are you to read the little pop ups from bootcamp unless you got a mac..Either way, i was informed by the sales rep that it would work just fine. The worst part is is that i am in the middle of my apple tech training. So they are willing to screw over their own it seems.
As for my issues, i am able to use an external monitor to get around it, but common apple. Do what's right!
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