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?
Best Answer
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.