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So I attempted to set up dual boot (Boot Camp) on my new MacBook Air (Mountain Lion) with Windows 7 and failed spectacularly in the process. The Mac just boots straight into Windows now. There's no boot menu and I can't seem to find a way to boot to Mac OS X. Hoping someone here can help.

Here's how I got into this mess:

  • Created a bootable Windows 7 USB key with an x64 Windows 7 ISO using Windows USB/DVD download tool.
  • Ran Boot Camp on the Mac, unticking the option to create a bootable Windows disk.
  • Chose a partition size of 64 GB for the Windows partition.
  • At this point I think the Mac tried to reboot itself, but as I was typing in a browser window at the time I seem to have cancelled that by mistake. So (and this is where I think I went wrong), I manually rebooted with the Windows USB stick in the USB slot.
  • The Mac rebooted and the windows stick took over, and I chose to install to the 64GB partition I made in Boot Camp.
  • This all went fine, but the Mac now boots straight into Windows, but seems to be missing drivers for lots of stuff, most importantly the wireless network card.

I can't see any way to get back to Mac OS X. I've subsequently read about a tool called rEFIt that I was perhaps supposed to run before Boot Camp, but I haven't done that to date.

Is there any way to trash the windows partition and get back to Mac OS?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Shut down your MacBook, then hold down Option ⌥ key and turn it on. You will see a boot menu, choose OS X. When logged in into OS X, click System Preferences > Startup Disk, and choose which OS to start by default.

To set up Boot Camp drivers, download them via Boot Camp Assistant (WindowsSupport) folder, write the installers to a USB stick, and run from within Windows.

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    Thanks a lot, this looks promising. Back into OS X and copying the windows drivers to USB now.
    – Winston Smith
    Oct 15, 2012 at 22:52
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Install the free bootmanager REFit or one of its branches and everytime the computer boots (after the startup chime) a screen where you can choose which one to boot will show up avoiding this problem for good. (the option key method will still work)

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