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Recommend everyone do a full System Image backup before installing the big update.

It's odd though, these days I expect less drama from Windows updates than OS X updates since Apple won't supply native OS X drivers for my video card.

I've been burned so many times that I'm scared of both. Full backup is good advice.
 
Installed. Takes about an hour and is very similar to a full reinstall. It reboots a few times and you will lose a few personal prefs, but once you set those prefs again it's all running good. You don't have to reinstall Boot Camp drivers.

Speed wise on a hard drive it will be the same boot time.

Cortana can hear me better now. Before I had to speak louder with mic volume at 100%. Now she hears me speaking normally with 50% volume.

New contextual menus are the first visual change you will notice.
 

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I'm assuming the big update can just be installed normally and there's no need to pull the Mac formatted drives or anything prior? (that it doesn't mess with partitions)
 
Macbook Pro updated successfully but Mac Pro doesn't see the update as available yet. MS must be pushing it out in waves.
 
Got it done, finally. The regular upgrade failed but it worked fine when done from a USB drive.

The installer messed with my dedicated backup drive's partitions so I had to wipe and redo it. The new Disk Utility is absolutely awful, those pie charts were so unusable and rife with bugs that I had to boot from my emergency Yosemite 'rescue' USB drive and use the old Disk Utility to get the partitions arranged the way I want. There's some serious Apple Core Rot going on with the new Disk Utility. It's like they told an intern engineer to rewrite the program and include it with El Capitan. Inexcusable.
 
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The new Disk Utility is absolutely awful, those pie charts were so unusable and rife with bugs that I had to boot from my emergency Yosemite 'rescue' USB drive and use the old Disk Utility to get the partitions arranged the way I want. There's some serious Apple Core Rot going on with the new Disk Utility. It's like they told an intern engineer to rewrite the program and include it with El Capitan. Inexcusable.

My feelings exactly.
 
I keep Yosemite on a drive just for Disk Utility and WinClone.
FWIW: WinClone does work fine if you first boot into "Recovery" mode and disable SIP in terminal, then reboot and do your WinClone changes, then reboot and re-enable SIP. This isn't necessary when simply saving an image of your Windows environment, you only need do it when modifying or creating a new Windows installation from your WinClone image.

It is too bad that you can't simply run the Yosemite version of Disk Utility under El Capitan to regain the lost features and ease of use especially in regards to partitioning and RAID. Have to refresh my Terminal Unix memory and do it that way I guess. (Although, I too keep a Yosemite install SSD handy in my Mac Pro.) :cool:
 
FWIW: WinClone does work fine if you first boot into "Recovery" mode and disable SIP in terminal, then reboot and do your WinClone changes, then reboot and re-enable SIP. This isn't necessary when simply saving an image of your Windows environment, you only need do it when modifying or creating a new Windows installation from your WinClone image.

It is too bad that you can't simply run the Yosemite version of Disk Utility under El Capitan to regain the lost features and ease of use especially in regards to partitioning and RAID. Have to refresh my Terminal Unix memory and do it that way I guess. (Although, I too keep a Yosemite install SSD handy in my Mac Pro.) :cool:

Disabling and enabling SIP takes more time than just booting my Yosemite. Plus I mirror the same apps and documents on Yosemite so whenever I do boot it there is no downtime, I just don't have direct access to iCloud Notes because Apple thinks Yosemite's Notes app shouldn't be upgraded to sync with iOS 9. Another win for Microsoft who don't shut out older versions of Windows from using newer versions of OneNote.

Yosemite's Disk Utility has been hacked to run on El Cap, it is being shared on the El Cap section here. I just don't want to risk using a hacked app.
 
I was looking everywhere for a good new screensaver as OS X and Windows haven't updated their boring savers for years. Thank Apple TV for this one.

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/11/get-apple-tvs-new-screensavers-on-any-windows-pc-or-mac/
I really like these screensavers ... it is hard to stop watching them as they are mesmerizing!

However ... it seems that they keep the computer busy in such a way that the power-saving settings (turn-off-display and put-computer-to-sleep) are never activated ... it will run the screensaver all day and night forever. While I enjoy watching it even as i walk by the computer, I suspect the monitor backlight will have a shorter life in the always-on mode.

Is there any way to override this other than manually putting the computer to sleep or shutting it off?
 
I really like these screensavers ... it is hard to stop watching them as they are mesmerizing!

However ... it seems that they keep the computer busy in such a way that the power-saving settings (turn-off-display and put-computer-to-sleep) are never activated ... it will run the screensaver all day and night forever. While I enjoy watching it even as i walk by the computer, I suspect the monitor backlight will have a shorter life in the always-on mode.

Is there any way to override this other than manually putting the computer to sleep or shutting it off?

I only ever set screen savers or sleep mode manually, basically whenever I leave my desk I set one or the other depending how long I go for. I just tested and sleep mode still work normally that way. I also tested sleep after setting the screensaver to start after 3 mins. No problem again. Contact the developer on his GitHub to tell him what you found. It's strange though because the screensaver is just a shell for playing or caching a streaming video.
 
Installed. Takes about an hour and is very similar to a full reinstall. It reboots a few times and you will lose a few personal prefs, but once you set those prefs again it's all running good. You don't have to reinstall Boot Camp drivers.

Quite a hefty update, but it completed without issue.
I have to admit, I laughed when I saw the reassuring message, "all of your files are exactly where you left them". It's almost as if they knew I was running Windows in Boot Camp and I'd previously had a bit of a hard time with El Capitan. lol
 
I am having a problem with the Windows 10 Nov (1511) major update on a 2012 5K iMac (yes I know this is the cMP section, but this is where the smart users hang out ;)).

I had no issues applying the update to my 5.1 cMacPro, although it sure takes a long time to download ... prepare ...update ... configure ... etc.! I also applied the update to a 2012 Mac Mini and 2012 iMac with external Thunderbolt Windows SSD, although I took a couple of attempts. Just for fun ... I also updated my old PC. :)

The 5K iMac seemed to update normally up until it displays the large progress circle with xx% in the middle. It started the loading files portion, then suddenly rebooted back into Windows, but not the 1511 version as would be noted by a 2016 Copyright date on the System Information page. Now anytime I try to check for updates, it returns a status of no updates available. I do not see the 1511 update listed in the "installed updates" listing, so I can't uninstall it. It is as if it thinks the update was successful even though it wasn't.

Any suggestions???
 
Had a similar issue with the regular upgrade but the Media Creation Tool worked for me. Create a USB drive and install the upgrade from there.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/media-creation-tool-install

Begin the installation by running the installer on the USB drive from Windows. After that, option-boot from the Windows drive (not the USB) each time it reboots - it will reboot 4 times or so over the whole process so you will have to babysit it unless you change your default startup disk.
 
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I tried the Media Creation Tool and after a lengthy download, prep, install, etc. it once again rebooted to the page with the large progress circle and xx% and almost immediately rebooted back into the original Windows 10.

This time I got an error message:

We couldn't install Windows 10
We've set your PC back to the way it was right before you started installing Windows 10.
0x80073B92 - 0x0009
The installation failed in the SAFE_OS phase with an error during PREPARE_ROLLBACK operation



This is similar to what I received at the original attempt to upgrade the 5K iMac from Windows 8.1 to 10 using the Media Creation Tool. I think at one point I actually received an error message saying it couldn't install to an external drive.

I eventually had to move my Windows 8.1 installation from the external Thunderbolt SSD to the iMac internal SSD and do the update from there like a normal BootCamp installation. Once running, I hoped it was all stable enough and moved it back to the external SSD where it had been running normally until this massive update (other normal updates had no problems).

Strange that the update worked on my 2012 iMac configured similarly with an external Thunderbolt Windows SSD, but doesn't work on a 2014 5K iMac.

So ... here we go again.
 
Some tips that might help...

"According to Microsoft, the company has been observing that "some devices" that have an "SD bus with an SD card inserted" may experience some issues trying to install the update.

While the software giant keeps investigating the issue and offers a permanent solution, it recommends users to remove the SD card from their computers, before proceeding with the install.
"

and...

"disconnect every unessential peripheral from your computer" before applying the November update.
 
Some tips that might help...

"According to Microsoft, the company has been observing that "some devices" that have an "SD bus with an SD card inserted" may experience some issues trying to install the update.

While the software giant keeps investigating the issue and offers a permanent solution, it recommends users to remove the SD card from their computers, before proceeding with the install.
"

and...

"disconnect every unessential peripheral from your computer" before applying the November update.

Yeah ... even on the real PC, I had to unplug the unnecessary SATA drives before the original Windows 10 upgrade would work with a Solo 1 hosted SSD in a PCI slot. For the Mac Pro I removed all the drives and put the Windows SSD in a drive tray for the first Win 10 upgrade, then moved it back to the Velocity DUO where it normally resides. For this upgrade however, I didn't have to do anything special ... the Win 10 upgrade simply worked.

With my problem 5K iMac, I do have everything unplugged and all unnecessary drives removed from the Thunderbay 4 except for the SSD and of course the internal SSD in the iMac.

Thanks for your suggestions and links ... they were very interesting in that others with PCs are having similar problems. The Windows upgrade installers don't seem to be as robust as they used to be ... very picky about the target system configuration.
 
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Just for a bit of closure and to avoid hijacking this thread ...

The Windows 10 #1511 update issues on a 5K iMac is resolved. I WinCloned my external Windows 10 SSD over to the iMac internal SSD and performed the update there to completion. Now I need to decide if I should just call it a day and simply leave it internal ... or tempt fate and again WinClone it back to the external SSD (to avoid using fast SSD space, have 2x the space for Windows, and to keep it totally separate from the OS X disk).

Now ... per this thread ... my Windows 10 update seems to be running fine in my 5.1 Mac Pro as installed on a "external" SSD on a Velocity DUO in the PCI slot. :)
 
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