Beta 3: Solution for Bootcamp Windows XP Blue Screen and Keyboard/Mouse Fix

[Pat_Lee]

Some users have reported problems with Windows XP Boot Camp VMs where either a blue screen happens booting when attempting to boot into the Windows XP Boot Camp VM or report that the keyboard and mouse never respond in the Boot Camp VM.

After getting access to an users' machine which reproduced the problems, were we able to determine that the Windows registry on some Boot Camp Windows partitions is missing references to the IDE controller and keyboard and mouse that is used by virtual hardware. Adding appropriate references to the Windows registry while booting into the native Windows Boot Camp partition, we are able to solve both problems when booting into the virtual environment.

To resolve the blue screen or keyboard and mouse issues:

1) Boot your Mac into native Windows from the Boot Camp partition

2) Download the attached 'bootcamp_registry.reg.zip' file which updates the Windows registry to add references to the IDE, mouse, and keyboard required for the virtual hardware.

3) Unzip the attachment double click on the 'bootcamp_registry.reg' file

4) When asked to "Are you sure you want to add the information in C:(path to file) to the registry?", click Yes

5) If successfully added, the Windows Registry Editor will say "Information in C:(path to file) has been successfully entered into the registry." and click OK.

6) Restart the computer and boot off the Mac partition

7) Launch VMware Fusion and open your Boot Camp partition virtual machine, which should no longer blue screen or have issues with the keyboard or mouse

Thanks for your patience as we tracked down this issue.

Best,

Pat Lee

Senior Product Manager - Mac Products

VMware

Message was edited by:

Pat Lee

Updated the attachment to fix the linebreak issue!!!

[Andreas_Masur]

Pat,

Thank you very much for the fix....that is great news....again thanks for providing superb support...

Ciao, Andreas

[Pat_Lee]

Andreas,

Thanks for the kudos. However, all the kudos belong to the excellent VMware Fusion engineering team for figuring out the issue and to the customer who lent us his Mac which could reproduce the problem.

Best,

Pat

[canadoc1]

followed your suggestions but still get the BSOD and cycling reboot of the vm

[Pat_Lee]

Sorry to hear you are still having problems, please reboot into native Windows and do the following:

1) Click on the Windows Start menu and select Run

2) Type in regedit and click OK

3) Select Export from the File menu

4) Select All as the Export Range in the following dialog and save the registry.

5) Check your Private Message and send me e-mail with that registry export.

The registry export will help us identify why it is not working for you.

Thanks,

Pat

[canadoc1]

tried to send it to you but it is a 50 mb file and my ispq wont let it go through

[donmontalvo]

mine is 50 megs as well...so i posted it on my server:

http://donmontalvo.com/vmware/

bsod using bootcamp, including using the 2nd release of the registry fix.

don

[Pat_Lee]

Don,

Thanks for the registry dump. The engineers are looking at it to see why it isn't working in our your enviornment and we will let you know what we find out.

Pat

[donmontalvo]

thanks! i have winclone backups of my bootcamp partition so i can test any fix without worries.

don

[mikesilv]

Any update on this? I just did a fresh install of OS X and then Boot Camp 1.2, and am now slammed with this issue.

[donmontalvo]

i also did a wipe/reinstall of windows xp. same blue screen, before and after installing latest bootcamp apple drivers.

don

[Pat_Lee]

We are still looking into this issue. It isn't an issue of Boot Camp 1.1.2 vs 1.2, I have personally done two fresh installs of Boot Camp 1.2 and Windows XP SP2 in the last week and both worked successfully without the registry changes.

As soon as I know more information or the development team asks for more info, I will let everyone know.

Pat

Message was edited by:

Pat Lee to fix typo

[mikesilv]

So after many iterations over the weekend, I figured out a workaround for the problem with the blue screen/stop error on booting the Boot Camp partition as a VM or standalone after a fresh install of Boot Camp 1.2. It seems to be an issue with the Microsoft Genuine Advantage (or disAdvantage as the case may be) software the first boot after it's insatlled, if the VMWare tools have been installed first.

Another case of anti-piracy software making life easier for all of us...but I digress.

Here are the steps I went through to get a fresh Boot Camp partition and Fusion to work. (I make no claim that the process is as refined as possible, but other people can feel free to spend some time pruning steps )

1 - Install Boot Camp and XP. Do NOT enable Windows Automatic Updates!

2 - Install Boot Camp drivers

3 - Reboot a couple of times in Boot Camp until all Boot Camp devices have been discovered and installed.

4 - Activate your fresh install of Windows in Boot Camp.

5 - Return to OS X and run the Boot Camp partition from VMWare. (Don't install VMWare tools yet. Don't activate the VM instance of Windows yet.)

6 - Patiently wait for the partition to sense and install the drivers for the VM Hardware. This may take a couple of boots as well. (some will error and not install properly...including SCSI controller, Create soundcard gameport, and generic VGA...this is ok)

7 - After generic drivers for VM hardware are installed, turn on Automatic Updates to ONLY notify you of available updates. (Do not try to use the Windows Update or Microsoft update websites at this point...primarily because you have not yet activated your VMs copy of Windows.)

8 - Await notification that updates are available.

9 - Click on the notification popup, so you can install the 2 Windows installer related updates. (Only these two should show up at this point.) Reboot as required.

10 - Wait for the notification popup to come up again with additional updates.

11 - Click on the notification popup, so you can de-select all updates except for Windows Genuine Advantage update. You only want to install WGA at this point.

12 - After Automatic Update downloads WGA, install it.

13 - Reboot the Boot Camp VM and activate the VM instance of Windows.

14 - Reboot again to verify the crash does not recur.

15 - Launch Microsoft Update website and install all 76 (sigh) High Priority security patches. Reboot as required.

16 - If you wish, launch Microsoft Update website again and install all other updates, optional software, or drivers you desire.

If you follow the above steps, you should not see any blue screens in either a stand alone Boot Camp session, or VMWare instance of Boot Camp.

[donmontalvo]

i hate to say this but why is this not a problem with parallels? not trying to stir the pot, but i'd like to give vmware a chance but i haven't been able to use it at all.

don

[mikesilv]

Actually, I had a similar problem with WGA in Parallels. That's why I figured it might be part of the problem.

In the case of Parallels, I and other users were able to boot into standalone Boot Camp with safe mode, or after a few attempts at normal boot, then WGA would do it's thing, and life returned to normal.

No offense, but there's a reason that there's a beta label on this product still. I'm glad you're still evaluating VMWare vis-a-vis Parallels, but that's the whole point. It's beta, so we all get that chance for free, with the understanding that we may find problems. Snippy comments don't help. Putting some shoe leather into being a beta tester, rather than a beta whiner, does.

I realize a lot of people here are users, and have never developed software, but still, get a life. It's a free beta. In beta's, development teams have a lot of issues to work on. Things that are basically configuration problems like this, not code space problems, are the things we can help find root cause on, thereby freeing the development group to fix the narrowed down issue, so they can make the next iteration of the software better faster.

[donmontalvo]

snippy? beta whiner? get a life?

did you intend to be condescending?

don

[Pat_Lee]

I have personally performed two fresh installs of Boot Camp 1.2 and Windows XP SP2 and both worked successfully in VMware Fusion without the registry changes and we never saw the blue screen issues in house.

We are still looking into the issue and hope to resolve it soon.

Pat

[donmontalvo]

hi pat,

i'll wipe/reinstall in the next couple days. it's probably something i'm doing on my end. i'm installing xp service pack 2, office 2003, and norton antivirus 10. on all three, i'm running all patches (there's a ton of them). i wonder if space is an issue? i partitioned my drive giving windows 12 gigs.

thanks for all your help. and don't worry, i have d2d2t and ghost/asr images so i can restore any partition in minutes. please disregard the troll.

don

[Pat_Lee]

Don,

I don't believe it is something you are doing, there is just a corner case we have not discovered yet.

Here is what I have done successfully in my personal testing (which is nothing compared to what QA does):

1) Installed Boot Camp 1.2

2) Repartitioned my disk to create a 15 GB Boot Camp parition

3) Installed Windows XP SP2 CD

4) Selected an NTFS formatted disk

5) After XP installs, put in the Boot Camp 1.2 drivers and install them

6) Restart after the Boot Camp drivers install

7) Select Startup Disk in Windows and select booting to the Mac partition

😎 Launch VMware Fusion

9) Select Boot Camp partition from the list and click Run

10) Windows boots in my case and doesn't require a password

11) Select Install VMware Tools from the Virtual Machine menu

12) I then use the keyboard to navigate the VM Tools installer, because the mouse hasn't loaded yet. Install Tools and select restart when done

13) My Boot Camp VM then works correctly in case in either mode

So, I didn't install the updates at the point because it was painful. I did disable Automatic Updates and did enable the Firewall. I have installed McAfee in VMs, so I doubt it is an issue with Norton.

Let me know how it goes when you try again, or you can wait as we figure this out.

Pat

[KitGrose]

This doesn't work for me either.

I've got a 2 GHz MacBook Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM, and it still BSODs after applying the fix and activating Windows.

The machine has only been online for enough time to activate Windows.

Any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated (naturally). I'd really prefer not to use Parallels if I can help it.