Option key stopped working on startup

picnic · 1 May 2010 at 16:46

I'm new to the Mac lark, not had the machine a week yet. I installed Windows 7 x64 using Bootcamp and I could press the option key at startup and be offered the choice of partition to boot off. Haven't used it for a couple of days and now the option key has stopped working. The bootcamp partition is still there as I can access its contents from Finder.

So how do I get it back without deleting and reinstalling Win7 via Bootcamp assistant?

27" iMac i5

Scythe · 1 May 2010 at 18:21

Go to Apple icon (top left) -> System Prefs -> Startup disk.

Select your Win7 partition and press restart. Voila

picnic · 1 May 2010 at 21:05

Excellent thanks for that, and after I used the Control Panel Bootcamp utility to reboot OS X the option key appeared to work once, but not anymore. Is there reason it doesn't work every time? It's a little frustrating having to boot in to the wrong OS before restarting to the correct one.

dannyraul · 2 May 2010 at 10:55

I would recommend installing Refit boot manager so you don't have to hold the Option key when you want to boot into Windows.

picnic · 2 May 2010 at 23:14

Thanks, I'll look that up