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Windows 10 experiences on cMP

Hmm. So I reinstalled Windows and didn't install the bootcamp drivers this time. Everything was fine until the very first Windows update (automatic) then back to a bootloop.

The update contained 2 windows security updates and a Nvidia Driver id'ing my card as a 9500GT

I can still get into safe mode, so I'm thinking graphics driver?? I tried uninstalling and running the official Nvidia web driver but the same thing happens. Any ideas?
 
Inutopia said:
Hmm. So I reinstalled Windows and didn't install the bootcamp drivers this time. Everything was fine until the very first Windows update (automatic) then back to a bootloop.

The update contained 2 windows security updates and a Nvidia Driver id'ing my card as a 9500GT

I can still get into safe mode, so I'm thinking graphics driver?? I tried uninstalling and running the official Nvidia web driver but the same thing happens. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

As mentioned early you must absolutely remove the GT120 if you want to install a new Nvidia card or new drivers. The driver for that old card is incompatible with newer Nvidia drivers. In Windows 8 this could be avoided because we had the option not to install a driver we didn't like.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
As mentioned early you must absolutely remove the GT120 if you want to install a new Nvidia card or new drivers. The driver for that old card is incompatible with newer Nvidia drivers. In Windows 8 this could be avoided because we had the option not to install a driver we didn't like.
Click to expand...

Maybe I wasn't clear, I wasn't doing anything with another card, just using the GT120 for boot screens (necessary for this process). I figured I would get to the 970 once I had a stable install. I'm aware of the driver incompatibility and was using the correct version.
 
Inutopia said:
Maybe I wasn't clear, I wasn't doing anything with another card, just using the GT120 for boot screens (necessary for this process). I figured I would get to the 970 once I had a stable install. I'm aware of the driver incompatibility and was using the correct version.
Click to expand...

Ok cool. I did that. After I had a stable install I put the 980 in with the 120, booted up, then uninstalled Nvidia drivers and also both cards from Device Manager. Then install new Nvidia drivers, shut down, remove the 120, boot up again with only the new card.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
Ok cool. I did that. After I had a stable install I put the 980 in with the 120, booted up, then uninstalled Nvidia drivers and also both cards from Device Manager. Then install new Nvidia drivers, shut down, remove the 120, boot up again with only the new card.
Click to expand...

That was pretty much my plan, but no dice. the graphics drivers seem to cause a bootloop (at least I think its them)

My new plan is just to upgrade my Win 7 install but the media creation tool seems to take FOREVER!! Seriously, half an hour to do 3%, what's that all about!?
 
m4v3r1ck said:
My experience:

Installing it to anything else than an empty (as in media) cMP with only your Windows media on a SATAII isn't worth a try! MS is just a pickey PITA when it comes to an update/grade! The route, update or media created USB/DVD just does not change that! Pull all your disks, but leave your PCI cards in, if SSD is involved, empty the PCI cards and just let them sit there.

Good luck CrJackson!!!
Click to expand...

Thanks to many suggestions by m4v3r1ck and others on this thread, I finally have Windows 10 upgrade of my 8.1 working on my cMac Pro 5,1. The bootable Windows SSD is on a PCIe Velocity DUO card (as was version 8.1) but I did follow the advice above to finally get it working. Thanks to judicious use of WinClone to recover and restart the upgrade process after terminal issues, I have it working and activated ... and backed up with WinClone.

At one point I saw an error message about not installing to MBR format, which I assumed might be caused by the hybrid boot format Apple used with Windows 7. I inadvertently allowed the Windows 10 installer to reformat my SSD, which resulted in a perfect Windows 10 clean install without my apps and data ... and no activation key other than a link to the store where I could purchase a key for $199! At that point I reformatted and restored my old system using WinClone, and also tried the WinClone "make EFI bootable" tool. I then ran the update .iso which I had used to create a USB installer stick, and everything worked to completion. I still don't know for sure which of the above actions caused things to work ... but it is done now.

I had also used VMware to create a stand-alone VM of my bootable Windows 8.1 when I last restored it, so I ran the Windows 10 upgrade on that VM and it too is now working once I got the VM Tools to install correctly. I have not tried making a VM from the bootable image since there are reports of that killing the dual-activation key at this time. Perhaps VMware will release an upgrade which will solve that issue.

Thanks for everyone's posts with hints, tips, and disaster reports. Good luck to all getting this upgrade installed.

-howard
 
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VikNomad said:
if you have something like Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro it works right off the bat as a microphone.
Try front mac inputs I think those are for mic/headphones
Click to expand...

The MacPro 4,1 and 5,1 have no mic input at all. They have a line-in, which is not the same.

I ended up adding a USB sound card, which is a really tiny usb thumb drive looking thing with audio out, and mic in. That allows me to use a normal headset.

This is the one I use:
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Aluminum-External-Adapter-AU-EMAC/dp/B00OJ5AV8I

It works perfectly in OSX and Windows.
 
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That USB sound card looks great.

I was thinking of using the 'Make EFI bootable' option in WinClone. Does it convert a legacy Windows boot camp drive to an EFI Windows drive perfectly without any issues?
 
Ah well I tried the 'Make EFI bootable option' on my Windows 10 drive and now that install is dead. Let's see if I can bring it back to life with 'Make Legacy Bootable'
 

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I'm finding Windows 10 to have some obvious flakiness, mostly relating to disk activity. These are manifest in some rare failed booting, sleep from wake, and accessing HFS+ drives. I expected it anyway with a new OS and because we don't have truly tested Bootcamp drivers for it.

It will take at least a year for us to see Win10 mature and become rock solid. That's what happens with every release. The biggest problem NT platforms always had and still has is that when the system crashes or you have to force reboot it can damage the file system and make you go through loops to repair it. If you force shutdown OSX it almost always boots back up with no problem.
 
m4v3r1ck said:
My EFI converted bootcamped Windows 8.1 by Winclone worked flawless with no issues at all! Untill I upgraded to Windows 10.

Cheers
Click to expand...

I had previously installed 8.1 in EFI mode on my mac pro 5,1. It worked perfectly, no problems at all. When I did the upgrade to 10, it just kept the settings, and is also running in EFI mode. Was effortless.
 
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SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
I'm finding Windows 10 to have some obvious flakiness, mostly relating to disk activity. These are manifest in some rare failed booting, sleep from wake, and accessing HFS+ drives. I expected it anyway with a new OS and because we don't have truly tested Bootcamp drivers for it.

It will take at least a year for us to see Win10 mature and become rock solid. That's what happens with every release. The biggest problem NT platforms always had and still has is that when the system crashes or you have to force reboot it can damage the file system and make you go through loops to repair it. If you force shutdown OSX it almost always boots back up with no problem.
Click to expand...

NTFS and HFS+ are both transactional file systems, so very resistant to file damage from a sudden reset or reboot. The last windows that had a high chance of damaging its own files in a reset was winME, since it ran on FAT32.
 
Surrat said:
NTFS and HFS+ are both transactional file systems, so very resistant to file damage from a sudden reset or reboot. The last windows that had a high chance of damaging its own files in a reset was winME, since it ran on FAT32.
Click to expand...

A few moments ago I tried to access a HFS+ drive and Explorer froze up. Hard reboot and Windows desktop never showed up. Another forced reboot and I got the dreaded message asking me to install the OS install disk to run Repair. I don't have that disk because I installed online. Another hard reboot and same message. Force a shut down, waited a while, finally booted to the desktop again. Not as bad as it use to be in NT4. If I did a hard reboot with that it would demand a Repair and there was no way around it.
 
As much as I like Win10 and was thinking that OSX looks dull in comparison, I just did a simple tweak that made me fall in love with OSX again. In the latest El Capitan beta I enabled Dark Mode, I hid the menu bar and I used the new 'El Capitan 2' wallpaper. All of a sudden the OS feels fresh. It bears a resemblance to Win10 and feels like the Mac has been reborn. I really wish they would integrate Siri with Search and put an icon for it in the Dock.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
A few moments ago I tried to access a HFS+ drive and Explorer froze up. Hard reboot and Windows desktop never showed up. Another forced reboot and I got the dreaded message asking me to install the OS install disk to run Repair. I don't have that disk because I installed online. Another hard reboot and same message. Force a shut down, waited a while, finally booted to the desktop again. Not as bad as it use to be in NT4. If I did a hard reboot with that it would demand a Repair and there was no way around it.
Click to expand...

After reading this I got worried my Win10 would do the same thing. I had never actually tried to copy files from my OSX HFS+ disk to a NTFS disk. However, I had no problems, copied my entire itunes media folder to an NTFS disk I use as storage for windows. No errors or freezes. I dont know whats causing the problems your having, but I think its not windows10 doing it. Maybe an old driver still installed? or something with El Capitan? I still am running Yosemite on my mac disk. Also, I hate to bring it up, but is your hard disk going out on you? Is Win10 in EFI mode, or the hybrid bootcamp partition?
 
hfg said:
EFI ... UEFI ... hybrid Apple ...
Is there a easy, definitive, obvious way to tell which bootcamp partition is in use?
Something everyone here can look for?
Click to expand...

Apple computers use EFI
PC's use UEFI, macs do not use UEFI.

Apple Bootcamp has two parts. One creates the hybrid bootable windows partiton for you to install windows on. The other is just a collection of hardware drivers so windows can control the mac properly.

If you used the apple bootcamp utility to create your windows partition before you installed it, you're in the hybrid bootcamp mode.

If you directly installed windows on a BLANK hard disk with no assistance from apple at all, just treating the mac as if it was a PC, it will be EFI mode. When you put the windows dvd in, and hold OPTION to choose to start from it, it will have two choices, "windows" and "efi boot". Choose EFI boot, and windows will install itself in EFI mode.

Its VERY IMPORTANT that when you install windows in EFI mode on a mac pro, you remove the other hard disks including the one with OSX on it. The windows installer will sometimes create its hidden system partition on the wrong hard disk. So removing all but the one your installing to, stops that chance from happening.

The advantage of EFI mode is faster booting, no bios translation for the partition info, and windows can take advantage of all the EFI features of the motherboard firmware. The boot screens also run at a higher resolution when in EFI. There may be other advantages, I'm not an expert on EFI.

The mac pro 5,1 can install windows 8.1 and 10 in EFI mode with no problems. I'm not sure about older macs, and I know that only some of the laptops can do it.

If I have anything wrong here, or made any mistakes, other mac techs are welcome to correct me. I'm just informing based on what i have done on the computers I have.
 
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Thanks for that explanation.

If one were to try to assist someone troubleshoot their installation or upgrade, is there a way to tell by inspection of their system which boot system they currently have running?

I assume all single drive BootCamp initiated installations from OS X will be Apple hybrid format?
What if they simply created a blank partition on their OS X drive and directly installed Windows without using Bootcamp other than for the hardware drivers?
 
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Surrat said:
After reading this I got worried my Win10 would do the same thing. I had never actually tried to copy files from my OSX HFS+ disk to a NTFS disk. However, I had no problems, copied my entire itunes media folder to an NTFS disk I use as storage for windows. No errors or freezes. I dont know whats causing the problems your having, but I think its not windows10 doing it. Maybe an old driver still installed? or something with El Capitan? I still am running Yosemite on my mac disk. Also, I hate to bring it up, but is your hard disk going out on you? Is Win10 in EFI mode, or the hybrid bootcamp partition?
Click to expand...
The HFS+ disk I was accessing fromFile Explorer was just a spinning disk where I keep archived stuff. Works normally and don't know if it was damaged or being I left he machine idle for a few moments and it couldn't wake the drive properly.
 
hfg said:
Thanks for that explanation.

If one were to try to assist someone troubleshoot their installation or upgrade, is there a way to tell by inspection of their system which boot system they currently have running?

I assume all single drive BootCamp initiated installations from OS X will be Apple hybrid format?
What if they simply created a blank partition on their OS X drive and directly installed Windows without using Bootcamp other than for the hardware drivers?
Click to expand...
Doesn't work. Stick with BCA or dedicate drive.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
I really wish they would integrate Siri with Search and put an icon for it in the Dock.
Click to expand...

I feel like Apple had a great head start with Siri but has fallen far behind.

Surrat said:
Its VERY IMPORTANT that when you install windows in EFI mode on a mac pro, you remove the other hard disks including the one with OSX on it. The windows installer will sometimes create its hidden system partition on the wrong hard disk. So removing all but the one your installing to, stops that chance from happening.
Click to expand...

Yes, it sure is important. I didn't do that once on the assumption that Windows would only alter the drive that I told it to install to. Big mistake. It destroyed my OS X boot drive--had to wipe, reinstall OS X, and pull files from backup. I don't understand how Microsoft can think that is okay. Now I always pull all other drives out.
 
Just for trivia if you wondering why is there a hybrid apple mode when using bootcamp to make your windows partition..

When the intel macs first came out, and running windows on them was possible, apple was forced to make the hybrid partition bs. Windows at the time could not understand mac EFI, so the only way for windows to work, was to emulate a normal pc bios and partition to fool windows into installing. I think its possible to hack windows 7 into running in EFI mode on some macs, the first time I tried it was with 8.1 on my mac pro 5,1, and it was perfect, fully supported.

But thats why we have the bootcamp hybrid partition setup.
 
Whenever the next time is when I want to do a clean install of Windows then I will try these EFI tips even if I don't see a benefit. That WinClone EFI conversion feature doesn't work for me.
 
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