0

I have a 2013 model iMac at work with Core i5 processor (the first generation with the thin edges). It is running OS X Mavericks - the IT department here at work states that I can't upgrade the system to Yosemite due to some "open directory related integration issues." But I was given the green light to install Windows 8.1 in Boot Camp.

I performed the installation as normal. Boot Camp prepared my USB drive from our company provisioned ISO image, installed Windows to the partition, and the Windows OOBE ran. Immediately after, the Apple Boot Camp installer appeared so I allowed it to complete. Upon rebooting after installing Boot Camp, the system can no longer load Windows. A blue screen with the ":(" symbol appears every time.

It flashes by fast enough that I can't recover any information from it. I have found extremely limited information about this, but one post suggests that it is a KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK exception - sounds like an unsigned driver was installed (?)

Is there something I am missing? This seems very un-Apple. Windows 8.1 has been out for long enough that it should be pretty well supported by now, or at least I'd think. The machine is new enough, and even though the Mac OS side is a bit old, the Windows partition shouldn't be affected by this.

Anyone have any advice?

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

I found the culprit. It seems the Apple HFS driver isn't compatible with Windows 8.1. I booted a rescue disk and removed the AppleHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys files from C:\Windows\System32\drivers and rebooted, and Windows 8 booted fine.

I obviously lose the ability to have read-only access to my Apple filesystems, but this is not a big deal to me because since I work on a lot of Windows boxes anyway I use external ExFAT-formatted SSDs and flash drives to transport data around.

For others, if having some sort of HFS access was a deal-breaker, there are other solutions out there that can mount HFS partitions. Can't think of any, especially that are free, but in any case, at least Windows now boots on this machine and works as expected.

Improve this answer
2
  • Paragon seems to offer a free one. See HFS+ for Windows® 8/8.1 Free Edition. If you try it, let me know if it works. Personally, if it did work, I would mount as read only. (Just to be safe.)
    – David Anderson
    Jan 29, 2015 at 23:26
  • 1
    I tried the free Paragon tool and it seems to work just fine, however it doesn't have any configurable options (maybe that's why it's free) so you can't mount a partition as read-only as far as I can tell.
    – fdmillion
    Feb 2, 2015 at 16:29

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .