There was a time ( according to the history of computers ), when a flashing, blinking cursor lead to a feeling of deep satisfaction, just because the graphics controller worked. We passed that time, left it 30 years behind.

So what I was trying to do, which resulted in a blinking cursor, was something advertised as being dead simple: installing Windows on my iMac. In a short: I tried it for a week now, it doesn’t work. And even if it’s going to work one day, it’s not dead simple. So why rant about it?

Macs are cool, somewhat expensive yet wonderful computers. Since I had my first Macbook in .. 2007 I never thought about switching back. It almost always worked flawless, I never experienced a big issue be it hardware or software. Until bootcamp. Sucks. And Apple could do whatever it wanted to, I always felt the need to protect a company whose products are so outstanding ( which is still true for the most parts ).

But back to the technical aspects. What I tried. Each approach gets a paragraph.

Day 1. Using Bootcamp-Assistent to repartition my boot drive. Doesn’t work, alright, stick with a smaller partition. Works. Reboot to install windows. Black screen ( actually, two black 24″-screens with an immensely upscaled white cursor blinking in the top left corner ). Alright, power button, once again, option key pressed, selecting that Windows-CD-Icon, once again, black fu ( I’ll stick with black fu from now on ).

Day 2. Removing the partition and recreating it, using the BC-Assistant. Trying to reboot using bootcamp. Without any success. Reseting PRAM and VRAM. About a dozen times. Fun thing is that resetting the PRAM unpaired all my bluetooth devices from the EFI, so I couldn’t select my standard HD as a Boot device anymore. Trick is to plug in a regular USB-Mouse and keep on pressing it’s primary button until the CD gets ejected. But, still the black fu around.

Day 3. Calling Apple Support. After having a nice chat with the guy at the other end, we figured that removing the BC-Partition and recreating it ( see day 2 ), everything should be working fine. It wasn’t, of course. So I decided to clean things up. Saved my whole system to an external drive, deleted the internal disk, restored it, repaired all permissions and stuff. Recreated that BC-partition, shut down, PRAM, NVRAM-Reset, All cables disconnected except power and 2nd display, Black fu. Apple Support was not available due to their availability times.

Day 4. Resignation. I’m writing a blog post on how pissed I am.

Any tipps? hints? anything?