Windows 10 experiences on cMP

I just extracted the BootCamp 5.1 drivers and installed the ATI drivers, which brings them to 9.0.2 on Windows 7-64.

 

I freshly installed 8.1-64 (fixed ISO) on my Mac Pro 2,1, then upgraded to Windows 10-64. I am using BootCamp 5.1 and the "native" Windows 10 Radeon Graphics driver. Works well.

 

3 Qs.

Once you upgrade Win 7-8, does the key from those OSes still work?
Once you have your 10 key tied to HW, be it a full retail or free upgrade, can you ever wipe the association and install on new HW?
When will/did the preview edition stop working?

 

Nice! What kind of case are you going with?

 

Good choice. I like the drive trays on that model. Tons of expansion room.

 

4th Q now. If you have Win 10 tied to your Mac Pro, is it tied to a serial number or model number? How does that work with mutts? Is it tied to the mobo or mac addy or something?

 

OK. Do you know about my other 3 questions?

 

Once you upgrade Win 7-8, does the key from those OSes still work or do they get deactivated?
Once you have your 10 key tied to HW, be it a full retail or free upgrade, can you ever wipe the association and install on new HW?
When will/did the preview edition stop working?

 

OK. I have used 8.1 on 2 systems (not concurrent) and did not have to remove the key. Does that change after you upgrade to 10, or do you mean I can continue to use 7-8 on another system while 10 is used on the upgraded one?

So it seems like people should check out what the free upgrade key is and write it down. Otherwise, if they change HW, it would be lost.

 

Would you have to reupgrade then?

 

OK. So that key will NOT work for 7-8 again or only if it is not currently tied to HW?

 

Been running 10 for a couple of days, pleasantly surprised for the most part, though further learning experiences have resulted. Used the media creation tool in 8.1 to create a USB installer & did an upgrade onto a stable 8.1 setup (Wincloned beforehand, the backup came in very handy), worked out well apart from issues with the Boot Camp installers, which I'll come back to. Unlike 8.1, I haven't had to unplug and reinsert the mouse for the pointer to appear at startup, auto-detect & install of drivers seems to work better, stable, no performance issues. Even plays nice with the older games I've tried- GTR2 installed as easily as on XP, Command & Conquer 3 for some reason didn't end up with Start Menu items in place but runs fine (Kane's Wrath didn't work on 8.1- even though it's the same game engine of course, not expecting it to on 10, but I have a OS X Cider wrapper for that ).

The Boot Camp stuff, OTOH....5.1.5621 version was very problematic indeed on 8.1. Every single time I ran the installer, it appeared to go OK but got the kernel security check failure BSOD on restart. The drivers could be manually installed & worked fine, but that still meant no startup disk option under Windows & for some reason the keyboard eject & volume keys wouldn't work even though the keyboard driver was supposedly installed and working. Under 10, the installer would hang at the Realtek driver install, though all the other drivers would still work OK on reboot. Eventually ran the BC installer with the Realtek driver folder deleted...success. Eject key & volume controls work, Bluetooth driver ready, everything else OK.

Anyone managed to get the BC6 installer working on a 5,1?

 

Hi guys!

I have a MacPro5,1 and Windows 10 is installed (on a separate SSD) + the Windows 8 Boot Camp drivers that's supposed to work with Windows 10 too, but I have problems using Startup Disk in Windows to change back to OS X. The computer just keeps booting into Windows even if I select my OS X drive there in Startup Disk in Windows.

I can't use the startup manager (i.e. holding down the alt/option key during boot) to go back to OS X since I don't have an EFI graphics card (I have the the ”PC version” of an Nvidia GTX 970). I've tried to use the startup manager blindly, but it seems it doesn't load if there's no graphics card that can show it, so can't do it that way.

Any ideas?

 

The boot manager should be still there, but it's really really hard to use since you don't know the boot disk order, and the recovery partition may also be there. And all you get is black screen if you into that. Also, in your case, may be there is something wrong of the OSX drive, that's why it can't load. So, even if you choose that drive correctly in the boot manager, because it can't boot, and you can't see anything, you will assume it won't work as well.

You may remove your Windows HDD, and only leave the OSX drive in there, then use the boot manager. In his case, the boot manager should default point to the OSX drive (the recovery partition still there, but should not be the default choice). This will greately increase the chance that you select the correct drive.

Anyway, did you setup the screen sharing as your back up method to access the OSX? If yes, reset PRAM can do the tricks. But you have to re-activate the Nvidia web driver via screen sharing.

 

Do you have the stock GT120?

 

Thanks for the input, h9826790!

I did try to memorise the order of the drives in the startup manager when having the original graphics card installed. Nothing should have changes since then, but it can of course be that I'm doing something wrong. I have also tried holding dow the X key during boot according to this Apple article – which in theory sounds like the best solutions since no drive selection has to be made – but that doesn't work either. The screen just stays black.

I can startup fine into OS X and I've verified/rebuilt the file system on the OS X boot drive using DiskWarrior not long ago, so I don't think the problems is that. Maybe I should try to re-install Boot Camp in Windows? I have already tried to reset the PRAM.

I have the ATI Radeon HD 5870 as the card that came with the computer.

Thanks! I'll give that a shot.