BootChamp Help

About

BootChamp is a small utility for quickly booting into Windows.

BootChamp greatly simplifies the way you can boot into your Boot Camp partition. Traditionally you would either open System Preferences and select your drive or restart and hold down the Option key. Both of these processes are cumbersome and take time. BootChamp reduces this task to a single menu.

The first time a restart is initiated with BootChamp, it will ask for the admin password. After this initial process, you will no longer need to enter your admin password again.

The next time you restart your computer, whether it's from within Windows or from turning on your computer, the original startup disk will be used. BootChamp does not modify your startup disk, it only temporarily sets the startup disk for the next restart.

Custom Menubar Icon

BootChamp can display a custom image in its menu bar if you prefer to use your own over the built-in. To use a custom image, open Terminal and type:

defaults write com.kainjow.BootChamp StatusImage <path>

where <path> is the absolute path of your image. BootChamp will not scale it, so make sure it's the right size. Then relaunch BootChamp.

To use the built-in icon, run this command and then relaunch BootChamp:

defaults delete com.kainjow.BootChamp StatusImage

Command Line Mode (experimental)

BootChamp can be run from the command line for integration with scheduling tools or other custom scripts. First run BootChamp normally to make sure it is properly installed and detects your Windows partition. To use this mode, run the BootChamp executable inside the app bundle with the restart parameter, e.g.:

/Applications/BootChamp.app/Contents/MacOS/BootChamp restart

The exit status $? will be 0 if successful. Here are some common error exit statuses and their meanings:

StatusDescription
1No valid Windows Boot Camp partition found.
2BootChamp's helper tool needs to be installed. Run BootChamp normally to do an install.
5An error occurred attempting to set the boot device.
6Restart failed. Another process may be blocking the computer from restarting.

Troubleshooting

The "Restart into Windows" menu is disabled.

Make sure your Boot Camp volume is mounted and visible in the Finder.

I am getting an "authentication failed" or "must run as root" error.

Delete the /Library/Application Support/BootChamp/BOHelper file and try again. A restart of the computer may help as well.

You can also view the logs at ~/Library/Application Support/BootChamp/Logs to see if there are any relevant error messages.

Uninstall

Credits

Programming: Kevin Wojniak

App Icon: Tobiasz Usewicz

Localization:

Release Notes: