Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Slow SATA performance on Mac Pro in XP/Bootcamp

Found it, for those of you who arn't as quick like me, its in the software updates in OS X.

I'm quick light lightning. Updating now, then installing Bootcamp and XP next.
 
Marioz said:
No more. I just installed Win XP 32 and I have DMA version 5 HD after the firmware update
Click to expand...

Same here... just installed the EFI then SMC updates and WinXP shows DMA5 for HD. Nice!
 
Just updated with the EFI, have not done the SMC update yet.

I installed my XP SP2 back when i first got the MP and patiently waited for an update to come out. Installed the EFI update in 5mins, booted into windows and bam, no more PIO mode.


I did not even reinstall windows xp and HD tune is reporting 70~MB/s
Device manager is now reporting DMA mode 5.
Sweet..
 
Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update -> Use Software Update

louish said:
Is there a link to the EFI firmware update? Does it just run like a regular program once I boot into windows? I couldnt find any information about where to get the EFI update, all the forums I research are back from April 6th, so I'm unsure of where to get this recent update?
Click to expand...

Hi,

It appears you get the EFI update using OS X Software Update Utility. (Mac Pro EFI Firmeware Update, Version 1.0)

I am yet to install and personally confirm if this fiixes the SATA problems. I'd also be interested to know if it fixes the XP issue of not finding the extra two SATA ports...

If the EFI patch consistently fixes the SATA problems, i'll update my website to redirect people to the right direction. A Firmware fix sounds like a very clean way of correcting this issue. I wonder what other tweaks apple's low-level techies made :)

That said, Slipstreaming is still a *very* useful process for Windows XP. You can upgrade a XP Service Pack 1 to Service Pack 2, and you can add all the hot fixes in on go, not to mention other usefull tweaks. (like not installing windows messenger, etc)

Terrabit!
 
RAID -> OS X Firmware Update -> Not Working

I have just tried to install the EFI firmware three times in a row.

Each time the front white LED blinks rapidly, then the speakers exclaim a very sorrowfull sound, and the system reboots. No progress screen, no nothin... when I get back into OS X, it wants me to reboot again... A quick check of the system profiler, and my firmware definitely hasn't been updated...

Now; My gut tells me the apple update utility is copying the latest firm-ware update to a specific location on the boot hard-drive so that the currently active firmware can load it into memory...

Of course, i don't think they guys at apple seriously considered a software RAID boot partition... :mad:

Soooo, I suspect I am going to have to make a minimal OS X partition / installation on my dedicated windows XP drive, just for doing firmware updates.

I'll let everybody know how that works out.

----[ update ] ----


Sigh.,

The problem is definitely that with RAID systems that you have to boot of a Non-Raid OS-x Boot Drive, run the two sets of firmware update, then move back to RAID drives.

Technically: the firware is stored on a specific sector of the hard drive, the computer reboots into special firmware loading software, the firmware loading software naively tries to search for the firm ware at a specific location on the hard drive. If you have RAID, its not going to find the firmware.

You can leave your RAID drives visible (you don't have to unplug anything) but you do have to boot of a booring-normal OS X setup.

There are few ways you can do this:
* Install OS X on an External drive
* Install OS X on an iPod harddrive (20 gig model, etc).
* etc.

Its a pain.

Terrabit!
 
So.. I just installed Windows XP on my Mac Pro and it only recognized 1 of my 2 video cards.....

Has anyone else had this problem?

In my device manager, I have 7 yellow !'s.

1. USB Human Interface Device (1 ! out of 2 others that don't have !'s.)
2. Base System Device
3-6. Intel (R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 3, 5, 6, 7
7. Intel (R) 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Downstream Port E1

Does any one know if any of those are the video card that isnt showing up. I have 2 NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT's installed direct from Apple. Everything works fine in OS X.

Thanks
 
Firmware update fixes RAM problem in XP64

It looks like after updating my firmware, my RAM problem under XP64 is gone. It sees the full 4gig, SATA works great, keyboard mouse work, ATI X1900 works great - overall it is one extremely fast PC and now Maya 8 and Realflow 4 64bit versions can access all the RAM. All of this with no bootcamp installed.
 
ok, so the properties of the Intel (R) 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Downstream Port E1 said it couldnt start because there wasnt enough resourses to start the device, and it said to disable a different device if I wanted it to work (ok so i dont remember the EXACT error, but thats what it said).

So, I tried disabling the PCI Express Downstream Port E3 and AS SOON AS I did, windows instantly popuped the New Hardware Wizard, it found the other video card. Then the whole system shut down, then on reboot, it just acted funny, screen flashed a few times, on windows startup, i got a Microsoft Send Report error, etc...

So my question is, does windows only allow a certain amount of System Devices before it runs out? My system devices has A LOT of items in it... im sure somethings in there I dont need to free up the resource to get the Port E1 working.

Does anyone know which item is the best to disable so I can get the Port E1 to stay working? Since I had so many errors, I dont want to really keep the Port E3 disabled, it appears I need it.

Here is a picture with the Port E3 disabled, which causes the 2nd video card to work, but disabling the Port E3 makes my ethernet card not work, so no internet.
http://www.louish.com/devicemanager.jpg

Thanks
Clint
 
I need some help folks. When I picked up my mac pro today I started to do the XP install (before I found out about the firmware update). I created a 32GB partition, formatted the partition with the XP install program and then bam! Some blue screen with text I cant remember, something to the affect of trying to install again. I tried to install again and the same issue. So, I then decided to just delete the partition and start from scratch. For whatever reason though the disc utility wont let me delete the partition. Does anyone have any suggestions on this? The only thing I could think of right now would be to completely format the whole HD.
 
djhspawn said:
For whatever reason though the disc utility wont let me delete the partition. Does anyone have any suggestions on this? The only thing I could think of right now would be to completely format the whole HD.
Click to expand...

Don't use Disk Utility, try the Bootcamp one.

-Jerry C.
 
For people with 2 video cards and Mac Pro

Ok, update. Got it working.

I decided to see if there was still a resource problem by removing the 2nd video card. There wasnt issued.

So then I moved the 2nd video card to a different slot, rebooted. It worked. It found the 2nd card and now all 4 monitors are working in XP.

So if any one else is having this problem, just try changing the slot of the video card.

Clint
 
Everyone that quit reading this LOOOOOOONG thread 5 pages ago might go thru the excruciating hassle of making a slipstreamed iso and completely re-installing their WinXP and apps, etc, etc, only to find out that ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS:

*** UPGRADE THE EFI Firmware ****

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wasted several hours installing WinXP-64 to an IDE drive attached to the CDROM cable with a slipstreamed ISO. Unfortunately, I could only get it to boot under safe mode (most likely a video driver problem), but FORTUNATELY before I wasted any more time making a 32 bit ISO and re-formatting the 32 bit XP installation I spent a week setting up, I upgraded the EFI and BINGO...all is well, and I'm now getting 70 mb/sec from the SATA drive!
 
What is the new SMC version?
I did the first update, but it's not finding the second update when I run the software update wizard. The first update was enough to get me UDMA5 though =)

BTW which thing is the windows harddrive on? I have primary IDE twice and secondary IDE twice. Which one is the superdrive and which are the HDs?

Thanks!

Edit:
Actually I just found the info at macupdate.com and it looks like it installed the SMC update at the same time.
I'm Boot Rom MP11.005C.B01 and SMC version 1.7f8.
 
What the heck folks???

So, I installed XP with no problems. Once inside XP I loaded the boot camp drivers disc, i then restarted. When I loaded back up my display looked like crap. The resolution was 640 x ??? at 4 bit. I have a standard 17in LCD and am using a x1900 card. I also still have the audio coming through the internal speaker. Its almost like I never installed the drivers from bootcamp. Does anyone have any ideas on this? Did I miss a step? Your help is much apreciated.
 
djhspawn said:
What the heck folks???

So, I installed XP with no problems. Once inside XP I loaded the boot camp drivers disc, i then restarted. When I loaded back up my display looked like crap. The resolution was 640 x ??? at 4 bit. I have a standard 17in LCD and am using a x1900 card. I also still have the audio coming through the internal speaker. Its almost like I never installed the drivers from bootcamp. Does anyone have any ideas on this? Did I miss a step? Your help is much apreciated.
Click to expand...

It happened to me. i just uninstalled the nvidia graphics driver and installed the latest driver from nvidia's website
 
Is there anyway to change the name of the HDD you have XP installed on (when your in mac OSX)

My xp HDD is called untitled. I cant change it?
 
CSA said:
Is there anyway to change the name of the HDD you have XP installed on (when your in mac OSX)

My xp HDD is called untitled. I cant change it?
Click to expand...

Rename it in Windows and the Mac OS will show that name.
 
so after installing the new firmware one needs to reinstall windows?
can someone please come forward and confirm that the hard drives work at optimum level.
Thanks
 
I know thsi has probably been laid out a hundred times sorry, I did a search and came up with everything but what I needed. What would be a good utility to check my hd performance now that I have the new EFI update installed. Thanks
 
CSA said:
It happened to me. i just uninstalled the nvidia graphics driver and installed the latest driver from nvidia's website
Click to expand...


perfection my friend!!!!

But I still have the same issue with the audio coming out of my internal speaker rather then my speakers. Any ideas?
 
keltuzar said:
so after installing the new firmware one needs to reinstall windows?
can someone please come forward and confirm that the hard drives work at optimum level.
Thanks
Click to expand...

You do not need to reinstall XP... after the firmware update and a reboot XP will show the hard drive with DMA access and all is well.
 
djhspawn said:
perfection my friend!!!!

But I still have the same issue with the audio coming out of my internal speaker rather then my speakers. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

So I guess the speakers works when your in Mac OSX?
That would be stange if they do work in the Mac because if the internal speakers work when it on XP. One would think the drivers are ok?

you can download those drivers also. It realtek AC97 or something. the same crap that go on PCs.

Heres my thinking because Macs are used for sound so much they would have a good sound card (by the way every Mac fan was telling me the Macs inbuilt sound kills the PCs) Then I find out they are using the same Cheapo crap low to mid range PC mother boards use.

One thing I found stange was my unpowered Mic that works on my PC, Wont work when i plug it into the mini Audio jack on my MacPro
 
CSA said:
So I guess the speakers works when your in Mac OSX?
That would be stange if they do work in the Mac because if the internal speakers work when it on XP. One would think the drivers are ok?

you can download those drivers also. It realtek AC97 or something. the same crap that go on PCs.

Heres my thinking because Macs are used for sound so much they would have a good sound card (by the way every Mac fan was telling me the Macs inbuilt sound kills the PCs) Then I find out they are using the same Cheapo crap low to mid range PC mother boards use.

One thing I found stange was my unpowered Mic that works on my PC, Wont work when i plug it into the mini Audio jack on my MacPro
Click to expand...


I have the same issue with my mic as well. I am willing to buy a USB headset but would rather just have my current headset work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back