Hello folks,
I've read tons of articles and forum posts regarding the installation of Windows 8/8.1 by means of EFI instead of emulated BIOS.
Before anyone asks, the current bootcamp/emulated BIOS/CSM mode brings some disadvantages:
- slow disk speeds (because it uses the IDE driver instead of AHCI, even on SSDs - it cuts the speed almost to half).
- No usage of the Intel integrated card -> run hotter on idle/light work than Mac OS X.
- Once you try upgrading to AHCI, you'll get a bunch of improvements but also problems:
* Very good speeds (SSDs will use their max speed), even HDDs work better
* Sleep doesn't work anymore. (It's important for me)
Overall, an EFI model is the ideal (both technical and from a performance point of view) way of running Windows on Macs. If we'd able to use EFI to install Windows it would all be good because there's no more need for emulation. However, there is the known problem that Windows 8/8.1 doesn't work on machines with EFI less than 2.0 (which is the case of Mac Mini mid 2011 or others: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237). The current EFI version for Mac Mini is just 1.7.
Pushed by the success of others on MBPs, MBAs or Mac Pros, I ignored the fact about EFI 2.0 requirement, and I tried myself to use the EFI installation and I got the following results:
- Good installation (one important thing to note here is that the MSR partition HAS to come after the EFI one, otherwise it won't boot - got that working by trial and error), and Windows 8/8.1 boots very fast (not taking those pesky 3-4 seconds after the boot sequence)
- Installed the Bootcamp drivers but couldn't get the audio working and all video-related ones, altough it recognized then the AMD radeon video card (all other worked fine - bluetooth, wifi, etc). Maybe this is a problem that happens with Mac minis that have the AMD dedicated card? I saw one user with Mac Mini 2012 with Intel video card had no problems.
- It would randomly crash with KERNEL_SECURITY or what not, if I try to do something related to upgrading the drivers for audio/video controller.
- It seems there is no sleep functionality AT ALL. Not even the sleep button and no sleep command. It's like the mini wouldn't be able to sleep at all. (writing this, it occured to me that I should have tried to use the power button to see what happened. But probably it wouldn't have worked either).
I've read (too late though) that not installing certain bootcamp drivers would allow the mini to work without throwing BSODs (so as that bootcamp drivers are BIOS-compatbile not EFI-compatbile)... but otherwise it wouldn't be usable.
Has aynone else from here had more success on installing Windows 8/8.1 on a mac mini through EFI? I saw that the MBA folks are very happy (especially the 2013 ones) since EFI is de facto for bootcamp.
Thanks!
I've read tons of articles and forum posts regarding the installation of Windows 8/8.1 by means of EFI instead of emulated BIOS.
Before anyone asks, the current bootcamp/emulated BIOS/CSM mode brings some disadvantages:
- slow disk speeds (because it uses the IDE driver instead of AHCI, even on SSDs - it cuts the speed almost to half).
- No usage of the Intel integrated card -> run hotter on idle/light work than Mac OS X.
- Once you try upgrading to AHCI, you'll get a bunch of improvements but also problems:
* Very good speeds (SSDs will use their max speed), even HDDs work better
* Sleep doesn't work anymore. (It's important for me)
Overall, an EFI model is the ideal (both technical and from a performance point of view) way of running Windows on Macs. If we'd able to use EFI to install Windows it would all be good because there's no more need for emulation. However, there is the known problem that Windows 8/8.1 doesn't work on machines with EFI less than 2.0 (which is the case of Mac Mini mid 2011 or others: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237). The current EFI version for Mac Mini is just 1.7.
Pushed by the success of others on MBPs, MBAs or Mac Pros, I ignored the fact about EFI 2.0 requirement, and I tried myself to use the EFI installation and I got the following results:
- Good installation (one important thing to note here is that the MSR partition HAS to come after the EFI one, otherwise it won't boot - got that working by trial and error), and Windows 8/8.1 boots very fast (not taking those pesky 3-4 seconds after the boot sequence)
- Installed the Bootcamp drivers but couldn't get the audio working and all video-related ones, altough it recognized then the AMD radeon video card (all other worked fine - bluetooth, wifi, etc). Maybe this is a problem that happens with Mac minis that have the AMD dedicated card? I saw one user with Mac Mini 2012 with Intel video card had no problems.
- It would randomly crash with KERNEL_SECURITY or what not, if I try to do something related to upgrading the drivers for audio/video controller.
- It seems there is no sleep functionality AT ALL. Not even the sleep button and no sleep command. It's like the mini wouldn't be able to sleep at all. (writing this, it occured to me that I should have tried to use the power button to see what happened. But probably it wouldn't have worked either).
I've read (too late though) that not installing certain bootcamp drivers would allow the mini to work without throwing BSODs (so as that bootcamp drivers are BIOS-compatbile not EFI-compatbile)... but otherwise it wouldn't be usable.
Has aynone else from here had more success on installing Windows 8/8.1 on a mac mini through EFI? I saw that the MBA folks are very happy (especially the 2013 ones) since EFI is de facto for bootcamp.
Thanks!
