Macbook Pro Will Not Boot Windows Disk

T

twoworms

Registered
I have a late 08 (or early 09) Unibody Macbook Pro 2.53Ghz. I start the Bootcamp Assistant and successfully create my Windows partition. When I restart with the Windows 7 disk, I get a blinking cursor for 1 second then it goes to a black screen and never leaves. I have tried several different Windows 7 disks with the same result. I have even tried booting from a Windows Vista, Windows XP and even a Ubuntu disk all with the same result, stuck at a black screen. I've tried zapping PRAM and resetting SMC, but neither did anything.

I took the hard drive out of this mac and put it into my wife's older Macbook pro, and it booted off the Windows 7 disk and completed the install to my drive with no issues. I then put my hard drive back into my Macbook Pro and I get the same black screen when trying to start the Windows partition, and still have the same problem that it will not boot from any other OS disk be it Windows or Ubuntu. It boots from OS X DVDs without a problem.

Also several months ago I had a Windows XP installation on this computer with no issues. I wiped it just before going to Snow Leopard.

Any clue as to what is going on here?
 
What is really odd is if I take my hard drive out of my Unibody Macbook Pro and put it into my wife's non-unibody Macbook Pro, it boots the Windows partition with no problem (Remembering I previously swapped these hard drives to complete the Windows installation to my hard drive). Seeing as the disk boots on her machine fine and not in mine, and my Windows cds (DVDs) boot fine on hers and not on mine, it seems to me it's something specific about my machine, but I can't imagine what it is.
 
Have you tried the hardware test on your MacBook Pro? You likely don't have the diagnostic partition any longer, so insert your original restore DVD, and boot while holding the D on your keyboard (for Diagnostics :D ) Run the extended test.

Something that you haven't mentioned yet is the memory.
Do you have your memory maxxed out?
Have you tried removing one of the RAM memory chips, especially if you have 4 GB chip installed? You could also try simply swapping the chips, making sure they are fully seated.
Download and run the memtest utility, setting that up to run in a loop for several hours.
If you have any external devices, do you get the same result if you unplug all externals as a test?
 
Hi, I am having the exact same problem. I have my ram at 4 gigs. Could that be the problem? Also, what kind of windows 7 loader are you using? I really can't seem to narrow down the problem.
 
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