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Choosing startup disk without a Mac EFI card

B

bllx

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 24, 2008
40
11
Hello folks.
I have a 2010 CMP with original Mac ATI Radeon 5770 and a PC unflashed nVidia GTX970, a setup which worked fine until I recently upgraded to High Sierra 10.13 from Yosemite 10.10.
After the update I get Windowserver crashes every so often with the nVidia driver designed for 10.13.6, 387.10.10.10.40.113. I experimented with another driver, 387.10.10.15.15.108, as per advice from this forum, but still got the Windowserver crashes.
Since the general opinion here is that the crashes are caused by having the original Mac vid card installed in parallel to the new nVidia card, I thought I would try running the machine without the Radeon card installed.
However I need the ability to swap between Windows (my gaming OS) and macOS.
For some reason, although I can set the machine to start from Windows in macOS, when I set it in Windows to start in macOS, it looks like it set successfully, however it continues to start in Windows. This behaviour has been present since I created the Windows installation, years ago. I get around it by holding down Option on boot.
With Mac set to start from macOS disk, I could hold down option, without switching my monitor to the Radeon, for the right amount of time (about 12 seconds), then using the cursor and return keys choose the Windows partition blind, and it would start in Windows. However now without the Radeon card installed, I cannot choose the Windows partition after holding down option on boot; if I hold option it will not boot at all, whatever I do blindly with the cursor and return keys, including just pressing return which should just confirm the currently selected Mac boot volume. It appears you have to have a Mac EFI card installed to use the 'hold down option key on boot to choose startup volume' function at all.

Can most of you CMP users out there with a similar setup successfully use the Bootcamp option in Windows to switch back to starting from macOS?

Can anyone confirm this behaviour, that you need a Mac EFI card installed to use the 'hold down option key on boot to choose startup volume' function, even if you don't expect to actually see the boot choices but can do it blind?

Thanks for any answers.
 
Many people recommend Bootchamp for this issue. I don't personally run Windows on my MacPro but it's been mentioned here many times and works well. Maybe give it a try.

There's also Boot Manager that's mentioned in this thread....

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...native-in-the-status-bar-of-your-mac.2145374/

There's also this thread....

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-to-boot-camp-without-a-boot-screen.2114788/

Hopefully your copy of Windows was installed using legacy mode as it can cause havoc on the SMC. There's been some discussion on this as well. tsialex is probably the only person on here that could rectify that for you.
 
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Your High Sierra install could have convert your SSD filesystem to APFS which might cause issue with bootcamp in W10.
You might want to try to install / update the bootcamp in W10 using following instruction:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ut-a-boot-screen.2114788/page-9#post-26689280

I've got W10 (in CSM mode as EFI mode caused bootROM corruption) and use non EFI GPU so I relied on startup-disk in OSX (Mojave) when I wanted to boot to W10, and to boot back to OSX from W10 I use the bootcamp installed / updated using the above link.
 
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Thanks for the replies.
Bootchamp didn't work (Cannot bless EFI error), nor did Boot Manager (after selecting Windows boot disk and restarting, cMP restarts in macOS, tried Legacy mode too).
Not sure if Windows was installed as legacy or EFI mode -is it easy to find out?

High Sierra installation did not convert anything to APFS; macOS is installed on a home-made fusion disk I set up for Yosemite back in the day, still working fine in High Sierra as HFS+.
My Windows installation is Windows 7...not sure I'm ready to reinstall Windows and upgrade to W10...which I think I would need to do to get the bootcamp 61 update.
 
Yes SIP is disabled and it's a very recent installation of 10.13.6, I haven't added any NTFS driver.
However I installed 10.13.4 and updated to 10.13.6, giving me Boot ROM version
MP51.0085.B00. Perhaps if I had newer Boot ROM (comes with Mojave?) I might have more luck. I also heard you get 5GT/S with newest ROM on cMP 5,1. Still not sure if you get 5 GT/S in Windows though.
 
bllx said:
Yes SIP is disabled and it's a very recent installation of 10.13.6, I haven't added any NTFS driver.
However I installed 10.13.4 and updated to 10.13.6, giving me Boot ROM version
MP51.0085.B00. Perhaps if I had newer Boot ROM (comes with Mojave?) I might have more luck. I also heard you get 5GT/S with newest ROM on cMP 5,1. Still not sure if you get 5 GT/S in Windows though.
Click to expand...

Correct, the current BootROM from Mojave is 140.0.0.0.0, which is newer than 0085.B00.

And that 5GT/s is at firmware level, will work in all OS (macOS, Windows, Linux...)
[doublepost=1547573864][/doublepost]
bllx said:
Not sure if Windows was installed as legacy or EFI mode -is it easy to find out?
Click to expand...

open terminal, run

Code: 
diskutil list

and post the result here, then we can easily tell if that Windows in EFI or legacy mode.
 
Here's diskutil list:

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage Sporned 249.2 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3


/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS TERRAN 2.0 TB disk1s2


/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk2

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage Sporned 999.9 GB disk2s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk2s3


/dev/disk3 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk3

1: Windows_NTFS BOOTCAMP 500.1 GB disk3s1


/dev/disk4 (internal, virtual):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS Gr3tchen +1.2 TB disk4

Logical Volume on disk0s2, disk2s2

A76A08AC-CFD2-4779-A74F-17C2DF86027D

Unencrypted Fusion Drive
 
Thanks for that.
Update: it seems I can boot into Windows using BootChamp; I must have done a PRAM reset to re-enable SIP, it was enabled again.
Disabling SIP again now allows BootChamp to work.
Going to remove the original Mac ATI Radeon 5770 card to see if Windowserver crashes stop when GTX970 is only video card installed.
Incidentally, I got most Windowserver crashes with full screen video streaming. eg BBC iPlayer. Sometimes several times an hour. Otherwise they were quite rare (every few days).
 
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Suspect when you remove the 5770 and switch to the 970 that these crashes are going to go away. I saw the other thread you had posted on regarding this problem. I hope that it vanishes and have been watching your threads as I'm getting a 5,1 with a 5770 in it and will be adding a GTX750ti I have to the mix. Similar setup. Glad to see Bootchamp is working for you.
 
Ive not had any more macOS Windowserver crashes since I removed the original ATI Radeon card from the cMP 5,1 leaving just the unflashed PC GTX 970, so it is clear that the nVidiadriver for High Sierra is unable to function correctly in coexistence with an installed 2nd ATI card. Perhaps they will improve it in next update.
Shame.
Also, I get no video in Recovery mode even though I read somewhere here that some people do through their unflashed cards.
 
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bllx said:
Ive not had any more macOS Windowserver crashes since I removed the original ATI Radeon card from the cMP 5,1 leaving just the unflashed PC GTX 970, so it is clear that the nVidiadriver for High Sierra is unable to function correctly in coexistence with an installed 2nd ATI card. Perhaps they will improve it in next update.
Shame.
Also, I get no video in Recovery mode even though I read somewhere here that some people do through their unflashed cards.
Click to expand...
Recovery only works with GPUs that Apple provide drivers, it will work with a NVIDIA Kepler GPU non-flashed, but not with a Maxwell/Pascal one.
 
h9826790 said:
Correct, the current BootROM from Mojave is 140.0.0.0.0, which is newer than 0085.B00.
Click to expand...

Actually the current BootROM is still 138.0.0.0.0

Screen Shot 2019-01-25 at 1.17.50 PM.png
 
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