WIN 10 Volume on MacPro

[Bytehoven]

I know this might not be the best spot to post this, but I thought I would start here and see what members would say.

I run a stand alone WIN 10 volume on my Mac Pro. Last night I logged in to update a couple of games and WIN 10 had some updates as well. Everything looked great and when finished I used bootcamp to reboot into my main OS X volume. Today when I went to revisit the WIN 10 volume, it was no longer available from the Bootchamp icon, and it was then I noticed the WIN10 volume was not mounted.

I tried using Disc Utility, and while the HDD was available, the WIN10 volume was grayed out and could not be mounted or repaired. I check to see if there was a problem with Paragon NTFS install and it looked great.

I tried pulling my OS X volumes from the Mac Pro to see if I could force boot the WIN10 volume... no success.

So, thinking outside the box, I installed Turexa Disk Manager with a 15 day trial period to see if I could mount/repair the WIN 10 volume. It worked. Tuerxa was able to repair and then mount the WIN 10 volume.

Subsequently, I was able to boot the WIN 10 volume. It looks like the night before, there was a major Windows 10 update which wanted to basically entirely replace my previous Windows 10 install, ending up with a 20GB windows.old folder. I may have interrupted that install the night before by booting into OS X, leaving the volume in a state which could not mount. It's took about 2 hours for the Windows 10 update to run thru all of it's restarts and now everything looks good. I have been able to boot back and forth between OS X and WIN 10 a couple of times without issue.

It's worth noting, once Turexa had installed it's own driver(s) when installing and restarting the Mac Pro, Disc Utility could then repair or mount the WIN10 volume, but I let Turexa do the repair and mount.

So, it got me to thinking... The Turexa Disk Manager may have saved me a seriously time consuming alternative. But I wondered if any of our Mac users who work or play a lot under Windows, have a preference software for being able to manage some Windows disk management while under OS X?

Honestly, I'd love if there was an OS X app which could clone a Windows volume, but maybe that's beyond the possible.

 

[h9826790]

Honestly, I'd love if there was an OS X app which could clone a Windows volume, but maybe that's beyond the possible.

Winclone

 

[ActionableMango]

Today when I went to revisit the WIN 10 volume, it was no longer available from the Bootchamp icon, and it was then I noticed the WIN10 volume was not mounted.

I tried using Disc Utility, and while the HDD was available, the WIN10 volume was grayed out and could not be mounted or repaired. I check to see if there was a problem with Paragon NTFS install and it looked great.

I don't know when exactly it happened, but I noticed recently that my standalone Win10 volume is also, like yours, not mounted in OS X, missing from BootChamp, and missing from Startup Disk preference pane (that last one is normal due to having Paragon NTFS installed).

However, Win10 does appear as a startup selection if I hold ALT/OPTION, so I am still able to access it and everything seems fine with it.

I don't know if it is a coincidence or perhaps the problem, but I also use Paragon NTFS.

I'm fairly unhappy with Paragon support by the way. The application says I'm eligible for an upgrade, but if I go through the convoluted motions to try and actually get the upgrade, the website says I'm not eligible for an upgrade. So I wrote a support ticket describing the problem, and they never bothered to respond to me.

 

[Bytehoven]

Winclone

I have Windows 10 installed on it's own volume on a stand alone HDD.

Looking at the feature set for the different versions of Winclone, I see the more expensive version supports cloning to/from PC HDDs in addition to the bootcamp volumes.

Can you confirm, Winclone will be able to clone my Windows 10 install from it's current HDD onto another HDD or SSD and it will boot?

Authentication is another can of worms and I'm assuming because I am not attempting to clone my Windows 10 install to use on different hardware, Windows 10 should be able to look up my current authentication and update.

Thanks
[doublepost=1454463097][/doublepost]

I don't know when exactly it happened, but I noticed recently that my standalone Win10 volume is also, like yours, not mounted in OS X, missing from BootChamp, and missing from Startup Disk preference pane (that last one is normal due to having Paragon NTFS installed).

However, Win10 does appear as a startup selection if I hold ALT/OPTION, so I am still able to access it and everything seems fine with it.

I don't know if it is a coincidence or perhaps the problem, but I also use Paragon NTFS.

Give Turexa Disk Manager a try... it has a free 15 day trial. See if that fixes your BootChamp as well.

 

[h9826790]

Can you confirm, Winclone will be able to clone my Windows 10 install from it's current HDD onto another HDD or SSD and it will boot?

Yes, Winclone 5 can clone any Windows 10 volume inside OSX (support El Capitan). Or make an image file (good for fast restoration). And the cloned volume also bootable.

If the clone process fail, it will tell you the reason and how to fix it. Most of the time perform a check disk in Windows will fix the problem.

 

[Bytehoven]

Yes, Winclone 5 can clone any Windows 10 volume inside OSX (support El Capitan). Or make an image file (good for fast restoration). And the cloned volume also bootable..

Will Winclone 5 do the same on 10.10.5?

 

[armut]

I have a similar issue with Windows 10 while booting. It takes very long to restart my system (to hear gong sound).
I installed also Build number 1511, after this I had "Windows.old" on my drive. After deleting this folder it seems to start normally but now I have still same problem with long startups.

 

[h9826790]

I upgrade to El Capitan since beta stage, and I never really use 10.10.5, so I can't tell you the fact from my own experience. I am sure someone do have that experience. However, I will safely assume Winclone 5 can do that in 10.10.5.

 

[JoSch]

Just for curiosity's sake: Did you do an EFI install. If so, how did you do that?

 

[Bytehoven]

I upgrade to El Capitan since beta stage, and I never really use 10.10.5, so I can't tell you the fact from my own experience. I am sure someone do have that experience. However, I will safely assume Winclone 5 can do that in 10.10.5.

Thanks... I'm avoiding 10.11.x like the plague for now. I'll do some research to see if I can find any reports from 10.5..x users.

Just for curiosity's sake: Did you do an EFI install. If so, how did you do that?

Yes and no. My original version of Win 7 was installed and upgraded to Win 10 on a flashed GTX 680. Since switching out the 680 for the non-EFI 980 Ti, this last major rebuild of Win 10 I let happen "in the dark" with screens eventually popping on once the process had installed and activated 980 Ti friendly drivers. It is a scary process waiting for 30--45 minutes while the beginning portion of the update happens in the dark, but it worked. I'm just about ready to begin setting up and testing new rescue media and I think I will have to swap out the 980 Ti for a 5770. I'm just holding off on the arrival of new 500GB SSD I'll use for the main Win 10 install.

 

[DearthnVader]

Just for curiosity's sake: Did you do an EFI install. If so, how did you do that?

This applies to Mac's older than 2013, Mac's newer than 2013 install Windows in EFI Mode by default.

First create a partition to install Windows to in the DiskUtility.

Then you'll need to use gdisk to convert the disk to pure GPT, if it's Hybrid GPT/MBR.

EDIT: gdisk commands removed, they don't seem to work with Windows 7 or 8.1 Installer.

You burn your Windows ISO to DVD disk, then boot holding the option key and select "EFI Boot" or some such from the DVD icon in the boot menu. Install Windows to the partition you created earlier.

Some Mac's can Boot Windows in EFI Mode from USB, but no one knows which ones can and can't. You can hack the Boot Camp Assistant to create a USB installer from the Windows ISO and even hack it so it supports Windows 8/8.1, 10 on Mac's Apple doesn't support these versions of Windows on.

https://mihail.stoynov.com/2013/04/...ive-for-mountain-lion-with-updated-boot-camp/

To add support for Windows 8/8.1, 10 to an unsupported Mac just edit the Win7OnlyModels in the info.plist and add the Mac model under the one you want to support. So if you want to install Windows 8 on a Macbook7,1 just edit MacBook7,1 to be MacBook6,1.

As I say, I don't know what Mac's can Boot EFI from a USB stick, anyone wanting to try it just has to create the USB stick and Boot their Mac holding the Option Key and see if EFI Boot is available. If it's not there is one last trick you can try:

copy bootmgfw.efi into the /efi/microsoft/boot folder on your UEFI Windows installer: ( To your USB Stick )

a. In Windows 7, bootmgfw.efi can be extracted from "install.wim" using 7-Zip (open the Windows 7 iso and navigate to sources/install.wim/1/Windows/Boot/EFI/bootmgfw.efi). ( On Your Windows 7 ISO )

b. For Windows 8 and 10, you can copy bootx64.efi from efi/boot to efi/microsoft/boot and rename it bootmgfw.efi.( On your USB Stick )

 

[Bytehoven]

This applies to Mac's older than 2013,

Thnx for that post.

 

[DearthnVader]

Thnx for that post.

I hope you didn't fallow my gdisk commands for converting a Hybrid/MBR disk to pure GPT they seem not to work with the Windows 7 and 8.1 Installers. I thought that was what I used to convert my disk and install 8.1, but I'll have to dig around and see if I can't find the right commands for gdisk.

 

[DearthnVader]

Ok, my gdisk commands were good the Windows Installer was just getting confused because I had Windows installed to another disk and it was wanting to add an entry in the Windows Boot Manager on the EFI partition of that disk, and for so reason could not. I just disconnected the disk and the install went fine.

Warning: BackUp your Data before you do this, this is non-destructive, but if something goes wrong you'll lose all your partitions/data. I'm assuming you're doing this on your main boot drive with OS X installed to it, this is how I installed Windows on my drive as BootCamp doesn't support more than 4 partitions and I already had more than that before I tried to install Windows. Master Boot Record only supports 4 partition entries and Windows will only install to a Pure GPT disk in EFI Mode. GPT supports up to 128 partitions on a single disk.

As I said before first create a partition to install Windows to in the DiskUtility. It must be on a GUID disk, by default DiskUtility creates Hybrid GPT/MBR disks.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/

sudo gdisk /dev/diskX

where X is the number of the disk you want to convert to pure GPT.

Type x for expert mode.

Type n to create a fresh protective MBR.

Type w to save your changes.

Confirm your changes.

Boot your Mac from your EFI install disk, in the Windows Installer you'll have to chose Custom Install, then format the partition you created to NTFS.

 

[Bytehoven]

Update... While I was unable to do a direct HDD to HDD windows migration, but I was able to save an image and then restore the image to other HDD and it booted fine. So now I know I should not have an issue when I'm ready to switch Win 10 over to SSD.

I am exploring the direct HDD -> HDD failure with Russell at Winclone.

 

[JedNZ]

I found a solution to installing Windows 64bit and upgrading to Windows 10. Read on if you have failed to boot and install Windows 64bit (7, 8 or 10).

I had a terrible time trying all sorts of fixes to try and get Windows 7 64bit and Windows 8 64bit installer DVDs to boot on my Mac Pro 1,1 (firmware upgraded to 2,1). 32bit versions worked, with some workarounds. I even tried creating bootable 64bit USB sticks etc, but every time I got the "press 1 or 2" screen on bootup and couldn't progress.

I then happened upon this technique http://www.jowie.com/select-cd-rom-boot-type
Basically you create a bootable DVD using the (Windows) imgburn utility. The instructions are great, but it was still a bit of a steep learning curve for me, and the first couple of attempts all failed.

In a last ditch effort I decided to install another Windows 7 installer that I hadn't tried. It installed Windows 7 Enterprise. I was really surprised to see my Mac Pro boot up and load it. Fantastic. I was even more surprised to see it was the 64bit version. So it got me thinking. Maybe I could extract the boot image file (BootImage.ima) from this DVD installer and use with a Windows 8.1 iso I downloaded from Microsoft's site to create a bootable DVD. It worked.

So even though the directions in the link above talk about using the boot image from the iso you want to craft a DVD from, you can actually use a different boot image from another DVD that does boot and run. Hope this makes sense. So I'm now running Windows 10 Pro 64bit, with BootCamp 5 and it couldn't be running more sweetly. I had to turn off sleep settings etc because my Mac Pro would not wake when the system went to sleep, but I don't like my Macs to sleep anyway.

If anyone wants more info from me, let me know. I might be able to point others in the direction of the BootImage.ima file that I used if they too have trouble trying the other solutions out there.

 

[Bytehoven]

Very good. I did the same thing a few years ago on a Mac Pro 2,1 8 Core. While 32bit Win 7 worked fine, it only saw 2GB of my 16GB system ram, and a number of games were wanting more memory. I think I used the same procedure to get past the 32bit Boot Rom limitation on my Mac Pro to install Win 7 64bit and it worked like a charm.

Congrats and I'm glad to see the hack still works.