Unable to boot into Windows partitions on early-2008 MacBook Pro using Crucial M225 128gb SSD

Question

I purchased a Crucial CT128M225 SSD on October 19th for my early-2008 17" MacBook Pro this week (Boot ROM: MBP41.00C1.B03). I'm currently running OSX 10.6.1. The Apple EFI 1.7 Firmware Updater says the update does not apply to this machine.

In OSX, everything works great. However, when trying to boot into any sort of Windows or DOS environment (such as a bootable FreeDOS CD image for updating firmware), the machine freezes at startup and I'm stuck at the gray boot screen. This includes booting from a BootCamp partition, booting from a Windows partition or booting from a Windows 7 install CD.

If I replace the SSD drive with my old spindle drive, the machine functions as normal and I'm able to boot from Boot Camp partitions again.

Any ideas?

edit: Firmware on the drive has been flashed to 1819. Still seeing the same problem, though.

edit: Others are seeing similar issues with different SSD drives here. The link to my thread on the Crucial support forums is here.

Answer 1

Long story short, it looks like the MacBook EFI 1.7 Firmware update addresses this issue, but the firmware update isn't extended to early 2008 MacBooks.

Without the EFI firmware update, the emulated BIOS used for BootCamp fails when it tries to locate the SSD.

This seems specific to SSDs utilizing the Indilix controllers with firmware <= v1.3. Here's hoping 1.4 resolves the issue.

Answer 2

Make sure the drive is setup to use Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning. Windows won't boot otherwise. If you partitioned the drive using BootCamp then this should be how it's set. If you just hand built the partitions using GUID or Apple Partition mapping then it won't work. (Disk Utility => Select drive => "Partition" tab => "Options…"button => "Master Boot Record")