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wjdavis

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 15, 2017
34
20
I'm running a Mac Pro 5,1 with a Velocity Duo x2. The card has two SSD on it, although only one has bootable OS--to be more specific, 10.12.6 and Windows 10 on separate partitions. Before this morning, I was able to boot into either OS with zero issues, and could even run Windows 10 on Parallels in 10.12.6.

This morning, I removed my PCIe cards to do routine cleaning. After I returned everything to the way it was before, I realized I couldn't access Windows in Parallels, as I had stupidly signed up for the free trial for their latest, expensive upgrade (and I was outside the trial period). Wanting to go into Windows, I decided to boot directly there, but was greeted by a black screen, and a black screen only. It remained this way for at least 20 minutes. 10.12.6, on the other hand, worked exactly as it had before.

Normally, when I had booted into Windows off the Velocity Duo x2, a bios screen would briefly appear, before Windows' normal start-up would kick into gear. I never saw any sign of this screen today.

I've spent most of my day changing PCI slots of cards, switching the drives on the Velocity Duo x2, booting off the drives from the hard drive bays instead (Windows works when the drive is placed in the drive bay), reinstalling drivers, etc. I'm still left with the black screen when I try to boot Windows.

A friend of mine thinks I may have zapped the card and messed up the bios, but other than that I'm not really sure what happened. As I said, the card -does- work in 10.12.6, and--after paying for it--I was able to access Windows through Parallels while the drive was on the Velocity Duo x2. I want to believe there's something simple I've overlooked that can be done to fix things.

Any ideas on how to proceed? I've already emailed tech support for Apricorn, but I'm hoping there's an easier way to make this work the way it did at 9:00AM before I started this fiasco.
 
So, belay my last. Apparently the above was created by a boot order issue.

Yesterday morning I also removed my DVD drive and not replaced it, as I thought there was a grinding sound originating from it. Just before turning in for the night, I put the SSDs back on the Velocity Duo x2 and tried to get Parallels running again, but couldn't access Windows, and received a message that the optical drive could not be found.

I shutdown and put the DVD drive back in, and, as they say, voila--Windows booted, exactly as it should have.

In short, I am an idiot.

That is all.
 
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