Windows 10 experiences on cMP

If you're running Windows 10 and you have microphone working thru the rear port, please contact me, post a link or otherwise tell me which Realtek driver you are using and the steps you took to make it work.

I want to chat when I'm using Steam. Windows seems to recognize there's a mic connected, but it doesn't actually work.

Cheers

--- Post Merged, Mar 7, 2016 ---

Okay. I ordered the Sabrent USB audio adapter from Amazon. $8 is an acceptable solution for enabling me to use voice chat on Steam.

Having said that, I'd love to be educated, Surrat. How is a line-in port different from a mic port? I'm neither an electrical nor an audio engineer, but it seems to me that a line-in port would take an audio signal from any source - microphone or other - and transmit it to the audio device, in this case the Realtek hardware in cMPs.

Please correct my limited understanding of the subject.

Cheers

EDIT: I did my own research on the subject. The absolutely definitive answer is in this post

Cheers

 

I picked up a Velocity Solo X1 dirt cheap and while it gives a nice boost in SSD speed, it seems incompatible with Windows 10 via Boot Camp. Velocity doesn't make any claims of compatibility with Windows 10, but I thought I'd try anyway. When I try to boot into Windows I get this command prompt...


There is no way out of this prompt, the keyboard is nonfunctioning at this stage.
I tried two possible work arounds,
- install the Windows drivers from the Velocity web site, but that produces a Windows version install error, although it does appear to complete the install
- remove the SSD from the card and install the card empty, to see if Windows would load drivers, but I can't get past the above command prompt

So I guess I'm asking (in my longwinded way), has anyone gotten a Velocity Solo x1, or X2, to work in Windows 10?

 

My solo x2 works with limited capability in win 10. Following my upgrade from win 7 I lost the ability to change OSs. Bootchamp just reboots into OSX. Using an efi card to option select the bootcamp volume on the velocity works, but the bootcamp control panel is incapable of booting back to OS X. Just reboots Windows. The behavior is very odd. I rather miss the stability I had running win 7 with this customized cMP.

 

I also noticed that the PCI fan ramped up to 1800 rpm with the Solo X1 installed. A known bug with an easy fix.
I could downgrade to Win7, but I think I'm going to send the Velocity Solo back for a refund. It was very inexpensive, but I get tired of troubleshooting after a while.

 

Just moved my Boot Camp Win10 volume from a WD Black spinner, to a Mushkin Reactor SSD. What a huge difference. 20 seconds booting to the log-in screen now.
My Win10 experience has gone from tedious to impressive in terms of responsiveness and boot times. I cannot imagine going back to a spinner for Boot Camp or El Cap.

 

Waking up this thread again…

What would you say is the best way to install Windows 10 on a MacPro5,1 for use with a non-flashed NVIDIA GTX 970?

I had it running fine (using BootChamp for quick temporary restart into Windows 10 from macOS, i.e. SIP disabled) but after I temporarily put back my ”Mac EFI” AMD GPU into the computer and started up in Windows 10 I couldn't after that get back into Windows 10 again when having the non-flashed GPU installed. I just got back into macOS.

BootChamp gave me this when trying to startup in Windows 10:

Bless failed:

EFI found at IODeviceTree:/efi
Mount point for /Volumes/Windows 10 is /Volumes/Windows 10
Mount point is '/Volumes/Windows 10'
No BootX creation requested
No boot.efi creation requested
Legacy mode NOT suppported
Legacy mode not supported on this system

I then decided to start from scratch re-installing Windows 10 (i.e. formatting the drive), and what a headache it's been involving partition tables etc.
I managed to get Windows 10 installed using UEFI boot (=no built-in audio, but my USB headset worked), but that only seems to work to boot into when the ”Mac EFI” GPU is used – if I put back the non-flashed GPU I want to use I get an error (”boot device not found”).

Any suggestions?
I don't remember how I got it working with the non-flashed GPU before… :-/

 

Are you trying to run both the 970 and the 120 at the same time? If I do that, I get a flashing command line and cannot proceed.

 

No, just want to use the 970. I don't have a 120. It was a Radeon HD 5870 (ATI) that came with the computer.

 

I had a Windows 8 > 8.1 Pro x64 Bootcamped SSD - now updated to Windows 10 Pro x64 14393.693 - on one of my Velocity DUO x2 slots.

I bought Winclone - clone software for Windows in OS X 10.10.5 and let that application bless it with EFI, by selecting "make EFI bootable". Now I can use it as an EFI bootable SSD with AHCI (Samsung Magician 5). All drivers for my cMP internals and all peripherals are working 100%!

Grab yourself a free trial version and try it for yourself!

Cheers.

 

Thanks for this info, but according to your signature you have a ”Mac EFI” GPU, which (if I understand correctly) is what makes it possible to boot into Windows (10) via UEFI. Also, is the internal audio working? To my understanding it seems that won't work when booting Windows via UEFI on a EFI (pre-UEFI) Mac.

In fact, I could boot fine and install from the Windows 10 USB stick I created with Boot Camp Assistant on a MacBook Pro (Late 2013). That gave me Windows 10 booted via UEFI which (like I mentioned in my post #406) worked fine as long as I had my ”Mac EFI” AMD GPU installed. As soon as I switched to the non-flashed GTX 970 I wasn't able to boot into Windows (”boot device not found”).

So, it seems my question remains – is anyone out there using Windows 10 on a cMP with a non-EFI-flashed GPU (I did before, so I know it should be possible…) and how did you install it?

Hmm… Maybe I can just try to install Windows 10 on my drive on a non-UEFI PC and then put the drive back into the Mac Pro?

Thank you all for trying to help!

 

I am
Well, not anymore, but will again as soon as i get some nice SSD for Windows.
To cut the story short, i have GT120 Mac Original card and MSI R9 280X which is flashed but i get errors and blinking cursors if i use stock EFI rom, so i have to boot using UEFI BIOS on R9.

I think that your's "boot device not found" has to do with not choosing EFI Boot at the startup screen?
Anyways, i got it installed with GT120, R9280X and one HDD installed in my Mac. Monitor had to be connected to GT120 (HD5870 in your case) for it to boot into Windows' EFI Boot.

After installation of Win don't let it reboot automaticly after each driver update, but install GTX970 drivers, remove HD5870 in device manager and reboot.

With non flashed card, i used Bootcamp manager to boot from Win to OSX and Terminal in OSX (bless) to boot back into Win EFI installation.
I think that is where you get stuck with Win booting, you have to choose EFI partition, not partition of Windows installation. In the picture below, that would be disk1s2, and the error appears because Mac tries to boot into disk1s4.

This it the topic i created trying to figure out what card to get and does it needs to be flashed, because i'm wanting to go back to nVidia and the last post contains all i said here (i think).

 

I installed windows 10 efi with my flashed 780 installed and ONLY the ssd for windows installed on the backplane. Then after installation completed, updates with all appropriate driver updates for pcie cards, boot camp, nvidia drivers. Then I pulled the 780 and dumped my non flashed titan x back in.

I would think a similar procedure ought to work using your native apple GPU.

 

Thanks for your replies!

What I now did is install Windows 10 on a non-UEFI PC and then put the SSD into my MacPro5,1. Works fine and boots in legacy mode even with my Mac-EFI GPU. So I’m not sure what it was that triggered the problem I got before with my previous Windows 10 installation that I suddenly couldn’t boot into.

I’m still curios if you’re actually booted via UEFI when in Windows 10 with your non-flashed GPUs inside? To verify, hit the Start menu and search for Run and open it. Type msinfo32 in the ”Open” textfiled that comes up and ”OK” and look for the line BIOS Mode item on the right hand side in the window that comes up.

For me it says Legacy there now, which (to my understanding) is needed for Windows 10 to boot on a ”pre-UEFI” Mac (such as the MacPro5,1) with a non-flashed GPU and also required for built-in audio to work on a ”pre-UEFI” Mac. Are you saying this is incorrect?

Anyway, let’s see how it works for me after I switched to my non-flashed GTX 970. I’m fine being booted via legacy, I’m mainly using Windows for occational gaming and for trying to stay up-to-date with the Windows side of things.

Edit:

Interesting. I now have ”FDisk_partition_scheme” (i.e. MBR) for the working Windows 10 installation now in my MacPro5,1 that I did on a PC:



Since it seems to work fine now I think I'll just let it be.
I also found this info from Apple (albeit for Yosemite):

””Master Boot Record: Also known as “fdisk,” choose this partition scheme if you’ll be using the disk as a secondary disk for the Windows operating system you installed using Boot Camp, or for an external disk you’ll be using on a Windows computer.”

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH20567?locale=en_US

Maybe not valid anymore, but it sure seems to work still.

 

Legacy is actually good for most of the things.

At the moment i'm in legacy installation (BIOS/CSM mode) and the partition of the HDD looks like this

Windows HDD partition in UEFI mode will look like this


Aside from msinfo32, even before the installation you'll know if you booted into UEFI or Legacy just by looking at the setup resolution. Legacy will give you 800x600 (or something like that) while UEFI will give you native monitor resolution.
If you burn Windows ISO on DVD and hold Option at boot you'll see two new boot option:"Windows" and "EFI Boot".
"Windows" is legacy boot and that is where Bootcamp boots after restart on pre-UEFI Macs (5,1 cMP can boot UEFI Win).
"EFI Boot" is UEFI boot. I cannot boot into (U)EFI Boot with my flashed AMD R9 280X but can with original nVidia GT120.

I can also install Windows in UEFI mode, install drivers for the R9 280X, remove GT120 from Device Manager, remove it from the Mac and then boot with R9 280X, BUT ONLY if GPU's bios switch is in UEFI BIOS position (HD79xx have dual bios). I cannot boot that Windows installation with Mac EFI ROM.

Also, when you try to boot into Windows from Startup Disk, it will try to load boot file from disk1s4 (on second picture) but UEFI boot files are located in disk1s2 so you have to boot blessing that partition from the terminal (SIP disabled).

So before i get totally lost let me answer

Yes, i can boot into UEFI Windows with non flashed R9 280X, but only after installation of Windows and drivers is finished.
And, i can boot into it only by blessing EFI partition in Terminal.

GT120 EFI works and boots into Win UEFI but R9 280X EFI won't boot into it, it reports Error on the BSOD.
As I'm looking to switch from ADM to nVidia I'm totally interested in your results with non flashed GPU.

--- Post Merged, Mar 10, 2017 ---

You would have the same result if you used Bootcamp for Windows installation.

 

Thanks for sharing!
Just a quick question before I write a more thorough reply (will edit this): do you get built-in audio to work in Windows 10 when booted into Windows using (U)EFI?

Edit:
I decided not to add any more info here – continuing below…

 

Didn't check that since i'm always using audio interface for all of my sounds

Have you ever tried booting into EFI Boot with HD5870 and see what will happened? No bootcamp, just straight boot-to-installation like you would do on any other PC (interested in knowing if AMD EFI's up until recently are not capable booting into UEFI installations or is it just this ROM that is pathced from original HD7950 for Mac).

 

Okay, then you probably don't have it working. But of course not really needed if you have other sound interfaces (my USB headset worked, like I mentioned).

Yes, and that works fine – I can boot my MacPro5,1 from the USB stick I have with the Windows 10 installation that was created with Boot Camp Assistant. But I think that will make Windows install as UEFI (at least it did now after I modified the ”Info.plist” of the Boot Camp Assistant.app copy installed in my MacPro5,1 running macOS 10.12.3 to be able to create a bootable USB stick from the Windows 10 ISO (when having an optical drive it seems that option is disabled by default). Anyway, I don't think installing Windows (10) yields the same partition table as I have now – Boot Camp Assistant creates some kind of MBR and GUID hybrid and now (when having installed Windows 10 via a BIOS only PC) I have ”MBR only”. This according to the tool GPT fdisk which I have installed in macOS.

Anyway, it's all rather confusing I think. I'll let it be the way it is now and put my GTX 970 back in and see how it goes after that (will let you know here). Thanks again for sharing your findings on this – it's at least a little clearer to me now.

Another rather irritating thing for me (not related to Windows 10, so a bit off-topic) when using the GTX 970 with macOS (plus the NVIDIA Web Drivers which are required) and the MacPro5,1 is that occasionally when waking it from sleep via Apple Remote Desktop the computer will wake up, but the display won't turn on – the video signal doesn't kick in as it should. The only way to get video back is to do a forced restart. I've tried to SSH into it and do ”sudo reboot”, but the restart process gets stuck along the way and the ARDAgent process is listed as ”stuck” as status if doing the ”top” command in the Terminal. I don't use my MacPro5,1 as my main computer (I'm using a MacBook Pro) so I wake and sleep the Mac Pro many times remotely. So far I haven't been able to reproduce this when only waking and sleeping the computer locally. Also haven't been able to reproduce when waking and sleeping via Apple Remote Desktop if the computer is using the ”Mac EFI” AMD GPU (5870) that came with the computer.

Edit:

Oh, typical. Now after installing the Boot Camp driver stuff in Windows 10, especially wanting the Startup Disk to function since I won't be able to use ”option/alt down” to get to the Startup Manager when having the GTX 970, but the startup disk I select in Windows 10 isn't obeyed. To get back into to macOS I have to hold down option/alt and select the drive there. I remember having this problem before and therefore I ended up always having macOS selected and use BootChamp to boot into Windows. Doing that will return me to macOS upon next restart, so it's not always convenient (when doing Windows updates that require restarts), but at least I don't have to resort to the with GTX 970 not usable Startup Manager.

 

I've just tried UEFI few days ago, before receiving new nVidia GPU.
Built in audio works if correct Realtek driver was installed (I've tested speakers and headset).
Send me a PM if you want me to send you a drivers (don't have download link anymore, so i'll give you Dropbox share).

I've reverted to BIOS booting, since i had random reboots out of nowhere (without any software RAID or AppleHFS and MNT drivers installed). Last time second installation helped, but i didn't have time for that now.