how to quickly reboot from OSX to Windows and back

Question

From Windows back to OSX is fairly easy. What I would like is a few less steps to get from OSX to Windows. Currently I launch system preferences -> startup disk - then select the bootcamp partition and press restart.

Being completely new to OSX it seems to me that a one-click action on the dock should be possible with some sort of automation scripting. Howerver I know nothing about OSX (yet) and how that works. First, is such a thing possible, and second please provide some tutoral links for such automation system.

Answer 1

Write a shell script that does this

#!/bin/sh
# tell OSX to change the boot disk 
# nextonly just for the next time - without the default would be Windows
/usr/sbin/bless -mount /Volumes/BOOTCAMP -setBoot  --nextonly  
# reboot
/sbin/shutdown -r now

This can be called from a terminal window

sudo bootcamp

The use Automator to call this via an apple script and save as an application

on run {input, parameters}

    do shell script "/Users/mark/bin/bootcamp" with administrator privileges

    return input
end run

Answer 2

Hold ⌥ while booting, you'll get a prompt to choose which OS / drive you want to boot from!

Answer 3

Another way to get from OS X to Windows quickly is to use Bootchamp, which adds a menu bar item like this:

For my Windows-booting needs Bootchamp has worked well.

(I learned about it from a similar question on Super User I once asked.)

Answer 4

I'm really fond of rEFIt.

rEFIt is a boot menu and maintenance toolkit for EFI-based machines like the Intel Macs. You can use it to boot multiple operating systems easily, including triple-boot setups with Boot Camp. It also provides an easy way to enter and explore the EFI pre-boot environment.

The OP seems to be interested about an OSX-to-Windows only command, so I guess this is not exactly what he wants. Still, I find rEFIt much easier to work with: if I want to go from one OS to another, I just need to reboot and then choose the OS I want.

And if you ever need to work with 3 (or more) OS'es, you will see rEFIT is a much better option...

It also allows you to boot up from an external hard drive or a pen drive, which is a very nice bonus.

Answer 5

It seems this script from SuperUser handles the closing of open windows (and stopping the scheduled restart if user presses 'cancel'):

do shell script "hdiutil unmount /Volumes/<Windows_Partition> -quiet"
do shell script "bless -device /dev/disk0s3 -legacy -setBoot -nextonly" with administrator privileges
tell application "Finder" to restart