I've installed Windows 8.1 on my Late 2010 Mac Mini (which has the NVIDIA 300m GPU) in pure EFI/GPT mode (no Bootcamp). Everything works after I install Bootcamp drivers (including sound), until Windows Update attempts to install the NVIDIA drivers. Once that happens, I end up in an endless reboot loop. So, I've read threads here saying that enabling I/O address space on the Display Controller and enabling VGA on the Display Controller's subordinate bus should do the trick, but what that does seem to prevent the endless reboot loop, I just get a black screen and that's it.
This is my EFI shell output:
shell>pci -i -b
.
.
00 00 17 00 ==> Bridge Device - PCI/PCI bridge
Vendor 10DE DEvice 0D76 Prog Interface 0
.
00 05 00 00 ==> Display Controller - VGA/8514 controller
Vendor 10DE Device 08A4 Prog Interface 0
shell> pci -i 00 17 00 -b
.
.
(Bus Numbers) Primary(18) Secondary(19) Subordinate(1A)
-----------------------------------------------------
00 05 05
(This is how I figure out that 00 17 00 is the bus that the Device Controller is attached to - please correct me if I'm wrong).
So, I wrote a short EFI shell script to set the proper registers:
echo "Setting Registers"
mm 05000004 1 ;PCI :7
mm 0017003E 1 ;PCI :8
echo "Booting Windows"
pause
fs0:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
I put the pause command so I can hit 'q' to verify that my registers are set properly, and they appear to be. Hitting Enter continues the boot process.
But, this fails whenever I use the NVDIA drivers (I also tried the Bootcamp-supplied NVDIA drivers, to no avail). I then have to boot into Safe Mode and uninstall the drivers to be able to boot into Windows again.
I'm getting tired of running Windows 8.1 with non-accelerated video, though....any idea why enabling the VGA BIOS isn't fixing the problem?
This is my EFI shell output:
shell>pci -i -b
.
.
00 00 17 00 ==> Bridge Device - PCI/PCI bridge
Vendor 10DE DEvice 0D76 Prog Interface 0
.
00 05 00 00 ==> Display Controller - VGA/8514 controller
Vendor 10DE Device 08A4 Prog Interface 0
shell> pci -i 00 17 00 -b
.
.
(Bus Numbers) Primary(18) Secondary(19) Subordinate(1A)
-----------------------------------------------------
00 05 05
(This is how I figure out that 00 17 00 is the bus that the Device Controller is attached to - please correct me if I'm wrong).
So, I wrote a short EFI shell script to set the proper registers:
echo "Setting Registers"
mm 05000004 1 ;PCI :7
mm 0017003E 1 ;PCI :8
echo "Booting Windows"
pause
fs0:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
I put the pause command so I can hit 'q' to verify that my registers are set properly, and they appear to be. Hitting Enter continues the boot process.
But, this fails whenever I use the NVDIA drivers (I also tried the Bootcamp-supplied NVDIA drivers, to no avail). I then have to boot into Safe Mode and uninstall the drivers to be able to boot into Windows again.
I'm getting tired of running Windows 8.1 with non-accelerated video, though....any idea why enabling the VGA BIOS isn't fixing the problem?