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Windows 10 experiences on cMP

Demigod Mac said:
It will say "Windows is activated" and the product key will end in H8Q99 (Home) or 3V66T (Pro).
After that your hardware ID is registered on Microsoft's activation servers and will automatically reactivate without a key on the clean install (hit Skip every time it asks for a key and it will activate when you login for the first time)

This won't work so well if you use a virtual machine + Bootcamp, however.
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Unfortunately, I am having problems with this activation method.

I have a 2011 Mac Mini which had Windows 7 on a SSD partition with OS X. I have updated it to Windows 10 several times and have received the "Windows Activated" status ... although I was having trouble getting the Mac BootCamp wireless mouse driver installed (it works fine, but lacks the gesture features). I have tried both the download update, and the .iso thumb drive update methods.

I decided to start over with a "clean" install of Windows 10 from the .iso installation USB drive. It installed fine and updates fine ... but refuses to activate with the Microsoft servers, even though it did so previously with the upgraded existing Windows 7 system. The version 5 BootCamp drivers installed fine and the wireless mouse is fully operational. I have tried this several times with the same results (thanks WinClone!)
 
hfg said:
I decided to start over with a "clean" install of Windows 10 from the .iso installation USB drive. It installed fine and updates fine ... but refuses to activate with the Microsoft servers, even though it did so previously with the upgraded existing Windows 7 system. The version 5 BootCamp drivers installed fine and the wireless mouse is fully operational. I have tried this several times with the same results (thanks WinClone!)
Click to expand...

Great. This is exactly my fear, thanks a lot.

I worry that I will wipe out my 8.1-upgraded-to-10 drive, install clean Windows 10, not have it activate, and have to do the whole thing over again starting with my Windows 8.1 media.
 
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ActionableMango said:
I was wondering about this exact thing. (1) How do I know for certain when it has been activated. (2) When I do a clean install from the install media, as opposed to an upgrade, won't it ask me for a product key?
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You can log into your hotmail, or outlook, or any sort of microsoft account online. Go to the Account Settings page listed under your name in the upper right. In that new window, click DEVICES at the top, you should see your computer listed. It might just say PC, or it will list your computer under its network share name, and say Windows 10 Professional under that. Once you see the windows 10 listed there, your good to go anytime you need to reinstall.

During a clean install, win10 will ask you for a cd key right off at the start, click the SKIP button. Later it will ask you again, click LATER or whatever it offers to delay it. When you setup your user account in windows 10, (this is very important), use your microsoft account login name/pass. This will give you instant access to your emails, and will allow windows10 to auto activate by checking your info on the site.
 
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Surrat said:
Dont know where this fits in, but maybe it will help:

On my 5,1, with win81 or win10, if I use the yosemite startup panel to set it to boot windows, the computer will boot to a black screen saying no boot device. This was covered as being caused by the fact that its an EFI install and the startup setting expects bios emulation.

The way I fix it, is clear the pram. When I do that, the mac will always default to booting windows EFI. I use the option key boot to select OSX if I want to run yosemite.

When you prepare your hard disk for windows, boot with the win10 media, select repair the computer, then go into the command prompt. You then used the command line DISKPART utility to CLEAN the disk? Thats the only way I know of to totally wipe a disk, it even deletes the EFI and hidden system partitions. After that, during install, partition it how you like, the installer will tell you it might create extra partitions, then let it go.

Not trying to be redundant, just confused as to the cause of the errors your getting since I didnt get them at all when I used win81 or win10.

(Note for others) Remember not to do the CLEAN disk install until after you have first installed win10 as an upgrade. Once it has registered itself with successful activation, then you can wipe the disk and build a clean install.
Click to expand...

I did all the DiskPart stuff. It installed, boot to desktop, activated. The issue is it wouldn't boot to desktop anymore after that. The Windows loading screen would appear, then turn black as it is supposed to, and then reboot. That is the endless loop. So I gave up and restored from WinClone.

I just need to collect reports from dual processor systems who have Steam installed. That Steam related instability is my only issue.

There's a new build of Windows 10 released to insiders today btw
 
Was it done with only the Windows drive present? I heard the Windows EFI installer can mess with the other drives' partitions and cause boot problems, so I yanked all Mac drives prior to installing. My Windows drive is an old OWC Mercury Extreme SSD in SATA II slot #1.
 
ActionableMango said:
Great. This is exactly my fear, thanks a lot.

I worry that I will wipe out my 8.1-upgraded-to-10 drive, install clean Windows 10, not have it activate, and have to do the whole thing over again starting with my Windows 8.1 media.
Click to expand...


If you don't already have it, you need WinClone so you can save multiple working Windows installations and replace them easily. Also useful for moving Windows from one disk to another, or from internal BootCamp to external drive. Plus it is your Windows "backup" program once things are stable.
 
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Surrat said:
You can log into your hotmail, or outlook, or any sort of microsoft account online. Go to the Account Settings page listed under your name in the upper right. In that new window, click DEVICES at the top, you should see your computer listed. It might just say PC, or it will list your computer under its network share name, and say Windows 10 Professional under that. Once you see the windows 10 listed there, your good to go anytime you need to reinstall.

During a clean install, win10 will ask you for a cd key right off at the start, click the SKIP button. Later it will ask you again, click LATER or whatever it offers to delay it. When you setup your user account in windows 10, (this is very important), use your microsoft account login name/pass. This will give you instant access to your emails, and will allow windows10 to auto activate by checking your info on the site.
Click to expand...

Are you a technical writer? Because those instructions were perfect. (So far, only did the first part.)

hfg said:
If you don't already have it, you need WinClone so you can save multiple working Windows installations and replace them easily. Also useful for moving Windows from one disk to another, or from internal BootCamp to external drive. Plus it is your Windows "backup" program once things are stable.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have my eye on that program. A lot of people mentioning it lately.
 
Demigod Mac said:
Was it done with only the Windows drive present? I heard the Windows EFI installer can mess with the other drives' partitions and cause boot problems, so I yanked all Mac drives prior to installing. My Windows drive is an old OWC Mercury Extreme SSD in SATA II slot #1.
Click to expand...
Everything was pulled. There was no issue with the installer. It's just booting. And frankly I never cared for the EFI boot. Like I said, the benefits are minuscule compared to the erratum that can occur. If we had the possibility to update the EFI to the latest version I'm sure things would be safer.

Discussion title changed to reflect all the different experiences and configurations we have.
 
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ActionableMango said:
Great. This is exactly my fear, thanks a lot.

I worry that I will wipe out my 8.1-upgraded-to-10 drive, install clean Windows 10, not have it activate, and have to do the whole thing over again starting with my Windows 8.1 media.
Click to expand...

Well ... today I still had no activation on my "clean" Windows 10 installation, so I started over again. I reloaded my working Windows 7 image with WinClone, then did the update using the .iso installation USB flash drive. However, this time I selected to save nothing ... no apps, no personal data, no settings ... nothing.

Everything went great, Windows 10 activated, updates installed ... as far as I know, this is the same as a "clean install", without doing it from scratch, and with no second-activation concerns.
 
Well, Parallels 11 is out (Now supporting Windows 10 and ready for OS X El Capitan.), and the funny part is that it's the paid upgrade that was predicted here. Of course it is! lol

I'll report back on any activation issues after I use it. I'm just waiting to see if OWC offers the upgrade through them for those of us that bought the Parallels offer with a OWC hardware purchase.
 
Was the in place upgrade done by the control panel update, USB/DVD method or the upgrade tool?

I used the upgrade tool method and it worked on 2 Macs.
 
Demigod Mac said:
This won't work so well if you use a virtual machine + Bootcamp, however.
Click to expand...
The Activation can be really flaky A good recipe is to give it time.
Let it Activate under Boot Camp first. The best is just to let it sit. If you get an error activating, reboot and let it sit. Have patience.
Once Boot Camp activates, do the Fusion Guest thing. Install the tools and wait.
I have lost Activation on Boot Camp after that, but just ignoring and waiting fixed it.
On my MBPro, disconnecting the Thunderbolt monitor and attachments helped. After Activation, reconnection was fine.
 
I'm starting to think there's something about my computer Windows doesn't like because I just installed a fresh 8.1 and its blue screened while downloading updates. It never used to do this and if there was a hardware fault it would effect OSX, but I'm not having any problems on the Mac side.

I think I'll build a barebones Skylake 6700K system and chuck my GTX980 in there. That will cover my Windows needs and I can let the cMP be a Mac.
 
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Do you perhaps have a RAID setup using Disk Utility? The Apple HFS driver for Windows doesnt really know what to do with these and causes the system to BSOD as soon as it gets loaded
 
bokkow said:
Do you perhaps have a RAID setup using Disk Utility? The Apple HFS driver for Windows doesnt really know what to do with these and causes the system to BSOD as soon as it gets loaded
Click to expand...
No

My config is precisely

X5690 x2
24GB
GTX980
GT120
Samsung Evo 850 (El Cap) and Samsung 2 TB HDD (El Cap Back up) in a Sonnet Tempo Pro
Samsung Evo 850 (Boot Camp) in Bay 1
Samsung 2 TB HDD (Yosemite) in Bay 2

I have had RAIDs in the past and Boot Camp Didn't have an issue anyway.

On the Mac side I haven't seen a system crash or kernel panic since probably before 2010.
 
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m4v3r1ck said:
You have a nice Mac that's very capable running both OSs, why spend another 600-700 pounds? Just for the g:eek:benches???

Cheers

PS don't forget to hover over the smiley, to see the context...
Click to expand...

For the stability and I could switch between them without rebooting. I'll think about it.

Here's a question. I've installed 8.1, installed all the updates, installed all my hardware and peripheral drivers. In total that comes to 42GB. Now I have made a back up of this basic installation with Winclone. The image comes out to 9GB. Did Winclone compress the data by so much to make the image or is the back up faulty (partial/failed to complete)?
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
For the stability and I could switch between them without rebooting. I'll think about it.

Here's a question. I've installed 8.1, installed all the updates, installed all my hardware and peripheral drivers. In total that comes to 42GB. Now I have made a back up of this basic installation with Winclone. The image comes out to 9GB. Did Winclone compress the data by so much to make the image or is the back up faulty (partial/failed to complete)?
Click to expand...

ScreenCap%202015-08-22%20at%2000.43.43.jpg


How about ~90 GB for my drive, after shrinking the NTFS Filesystem, a GREAT feature of Winclone for cloning to smaller disks....

If not shrinked, what was your Winclone workflow?

Cheers
 
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Hail Mary pass here - are the 850's up to date on their firmware?

Kind of at a loss as to what's causing the issues.
 
I just find it incredible that 42GB can fit in 9GB.

The 850s are fine with latest firmware.

The crash during the updates...maybe the clashing Nvidia cards? Anyway, I disabled the old one and installed the new one.

The convenient thing I have noticed is that Win 8.1 has downloaded all my Win 10 settings from the cloud. Chrome also did so. So all my desktop settings, themes, Internet bookmarks, and passwords were ready after two passwords were typed.

Now I'm installing all my apps. Then I'll make another Winclone of the OS and apps.
 
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