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Boot Manager: A Boot Screen Alternative in the status bar of your Mac.

norda72

norda72

macrumors member
May 27, 2016
48
6
Bollnäs, Sweden
Now nothing of this matters anymore. Old Mac Pro 5.1 is out of the game. No more support for it. The new MacOS 10.15 Catalina can’t be installed. When Mojave was launched last year, they forced us to change videocard, and so we did. But no driver for Mojave if you had Nvidia-graphic above standard level. And now, it’s all over.
 
V

vallejo

macrumors newbie
Nov 18, 2017
4
0
Brazil
norda72 said:
Now nothing of this matters anymore. Old Mac Pro 5.1 is out of the game. No more support for it. The new MacOS 10.15 Catalina can’t be installed. When Mojave was launched last year, they forced us to change videocard, and so we did. But no driver for Mojave if you had Nvidia-graphic above standard level. And now, it’s all over.
Click to expand...

Not entirely sure yet. Maybe they are referring to original 5.1 with the original card, the same way it couldn’t install Mojave. For us who changed the video card, maybe will be possible...
 
ClassicMartini

ClassicMartini

macrumors newbie
Oct 28, 2015
26
10
Kessel Run
S

Stu593

macrumors newbie
Dec 12, 2010
4
0
Stalled - any advice appreciated! I have Mojave installed on a AHCI PCIe SSD, with Windows 7 on an internal HDD. Within the Boot Manager window, I click on the Bootcamp drive (with Windows OS); the system reboots, but goes directly to Mojave (Windows is absent during the boot process). If I pull the PCIe card out, Windows 7 works perfectly. When I stick the card back in, Windows usually stops loading when it encounters the PCIe card and have need to do a PRAM reset to get back to Mojave. I was really hopeful that Boot Manager might solve this :), as see that someone else on this thread has the same setup and by enabling legacy mode it seemed to work ... but not for me :-(
 
startergo

startergo

macrumors 603
Sep 20, 2018
5,021
2,283
Stu593 said:
Stalled - any advice appreciated! I have Mojave installed on a AHCI PCIe SSD, with Windows 7 on an internal HDD. Within the Boot Manager window, I click on the Bootcamp drive (with Windows OS); the system reboots, but goes directly to Mojave (Windows is absent during the boot process). If I pull the PCIe card out, Windows 7 works perfectly. When I stick the card back in, Windows usually stops loading when it encounters the PCIe card and have need to do a PRAM reset to get back to Mojave. I was really hopeful that Boot Manager might solve this :), as see that someone else on this thread has the same setup and by enabling legacy mode it seemed to work ... but not for me :-(
Click to expand...
What is the firmware of the Mac and the video card? Is the PCIE card Sonnet? If it is I read some of them have problems booting Windows and need the boot screen selector. I read this on their website.
 
S

Stu593

macrumors newbie
Dec 12, 2010
4
0
startergo said:
What is the firmware of the Mac and the video card? Is the PCIE card Sonnet? If it is I read some of them have problems booting Windows and need the boot screen selector. I read this on their website.
Click to expand...
The firmware is 144.0.0.0.0. It’s not a Sonnet, it’s a PCIe card that I bought from Create.Pro a couple of years ago with a Samsung SSD. I have a Sapphire Pulse RX580 with 8Gb of VRAM. I am almost at the stage of installing Windows 7 on the card and buying an SSD for the macOs ... :)
 
W

Woof Woof

macrumors member
Sep 15, 2004
94
17
joevt said:
I have like 17 bootable OS's. Some EFI, some BIOS. Here are some of my observations:

5) I think all my Windows partitions require BIOS booting but Boot Manager will point to the EFI partition when I select any Windows partition on a disk (so all Windows partitions on the same disk will point to the same EFI partition on the same disk). Maybe all OSs that point to the same thing should be a single item. Maybe the partition that Boot Manager will point to should be indicated.

For macOS disks, Boot Manager will point to the partition selected (the info in the HFS partition points to the EFI boot file).
Click to expand...

I was about to post in the thread with the same request. Glad you covered it (and a lot more!)

In any case... whatever it takes to fix the dreaded "No bootable device found" (or whatever is says when you select an EFI windows partition in Startup Disk.)
 
h9826790

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
Itconnects said:
If NVidia cards have bootscreens why is everyone using cards without bootscreens?
Click to expand...

I don't get what you mean. The only Nvidia card that can shows boot screen and work properly in Mojave or later is the Kepler card (e.g. GTX680). Why I want to stay with such old GPU if I can use a Radeon VII, and just give up the boot screen that I don't even need it.
[automerge]1579369266[/automerge]
Also, my main usage is FCPX, even a AMD HD7950 can outperform my Nvidia 1080Ti. Why I want Nvidia for FCPX?
 
Itconnects

Itconnects

macrumors 6502
Jan 14, 2020
279
28
h9826790 said:
I don't get what you mean. The only Nvidia card that can shows boot screen and work properly in Mojave or later is the Kepler card (e.g. GTX680). Why I want to stay with such old GPU if I can use a Radeon VII, and just give up the boot screen that I don't even need it.
[automerge]1579369266[/automerge]
Also, my main usage is FCPX, even a AMD HD7950 can outperform my Nvidia 1080Ti. Why I want Nvidia for FCPX?
Click to expand...

That was the exact answer I was looking for
 
J

joevt

macrumors 604
Jun 21, 2012
6,967
4,262
h9826790 said:
I don't get what you mean. The only Nvidia card that can shows boot screen and work properly in Mojave or later is the Kepler card (e.g. GTX680). Why I want to stay with such old GPU if I can use a Radeon VII, and just give up the boot screen that I don't even need it.
[automerge]1579369266[/automerge]
Also, my main usage is FCPX, even a AMD HD7950 can outperform my Nvidia 1080Ti. Why I want Nvidia for FCPX?
Click to expand...
Don't the RTX cards have boot screens on the cMP? Of course, they don't work in macOS so Kepler is the only Nvidia solution for that.
 
TheSkywalker77

TheSkywalker77

macrumors 68030
Sep 9, 2017
2,890
2,760
Heyo! I noticed this program's Github hasn't been updated in a while so I had a few questions about this before I install it for myself. My newby questions are, does this work on the newest version of Catalina? Do I still need to disable SIP? And if I do, will it affect my Boot Camp partition? And, (this one I'm assuming is a yes) will it work on my MacBook instead of a Mac Pro?
 
C

CatMorgan

macrumors newbie
Feb 4, 2020
6
0
I just found this thread on a Google search for EFI Bootloaders, since I want to upgrade the video card in my 5,1 to an AMD RX580 Sapphire, but I'm not super fond of loading random stuff on my Mac without majorly vetting it first. I'm running High Sierra on the Mac side and Windows 8.1 on the BootCamp side. (I"m looking b/c I am not sure I want to pay the premium for a flashed card.)

I have an SSD boot drive in the second optical slot of the cMP and I have platters in 2 of the 4 sleds for storage. HS and Windows are each on a separate partition of the SSD.

I stream so I need to store and render a LOT of video and platters are cheap :D

I'm not a coder and I'm looking for the most off-the-shelf solution I can find to move between environments.

Thanks!
 
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Itconnects

Itconnects

macrumors 6502
Jan 14, 2020
279
28
hello, I would also need to install this app on windows as well correct? My Windows doesn't let me boot back into Mac via bootcamp control panel for whatever reason. I was thinking to install this on Mac, then head into windows and install there. I just don't want to be stuck.
 
epheterson

epheterson

macrumors member
Jul 24, 2002
35
16
San Francisco
I can't get this to work on 10.15.4, I disabled SIP and it asks a password each time, then reboots right back into macOS every time.

Edit: My bad, you have to disable SIP prior to install, if you disable it after you need to then re-install and things work fine.
 
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simalexander

macrumors newbie
Jun 21, 2020
5
0
I am having the problem as epheterson. The only difference is that I am on on 10.15.5. I did disable SIP before I installed it and the version I installed was v2.1.1 the latest version. Is it possible that boot manger isn't compatible with Mac OS version 10.15.5? Please let me know. Thanks.
 
WalkerDnB

WalkerDnB

macrumors newbie
Nov 14, 2020
1
0
Im running boot manager on my 3.1 running catalina, windows 10 64bit and windows xp 32bit both in legacy mode, my problem is if I select the windows XP disk it will reboot to the windows 10 disk, If I remove the windows 10 disk and try it will reboot to XP fine, any idea how I can fix this? Thanks
 
J

joevt

macrumors 604
Jun 21, 2012
6,967
4,262
WalkerDnB said:
Im running boot manager on my 3.1 running catalina, windows 10 64bit and windows xp 32bit both in legacy mode, my problem is if I select the windows XP disk it will reboot to the windows 10 disk, If I remove the windows 10 disk and try it will reboot to XP fine, any idea how I can fix this? Thanks
Click to expand...
Legacy booting on old Macs like the MacPro3,1 requires a few things:
1) The BootCampHD nvram variable needs to be set to the disk that has the MBR code that you want to boot (Startup Disk preferences panel can do that when you select a Windows partition)
2) The partition on the disk that you want to boot needs to be marked active in the MBR (you can use fdisk to do that, or iPartition).
3) Finally, the boot loader just needs to launch the legacy booter Boot Camp EFI app using the correct firmware EFI device path (Startup Disk preferences panel will store the correct path in nvram variables when you select a Windows partition)

rEFInd has code to do all of the above.
For #3, the BootCamp EFI app has the same GUID in all Macs able to boot legacy BIOS, but the firmware address may change. To handle this, rEFInd has device paths for all the known addresses. Another method might be to search all handles that have Efi Firmware Volume Protocol for the Boot Camp App GUID. The device path for the handle will then be part of the device path to launch.

Here's some more info:
#272

Here's a script to view EFI device paths in nvram variables (using UEFI 2.x formatting which is slightly different than what you see in EFI 1.1 shell but the hex results are the same):
gist.github.com

macOS nvram boot variables, device properties, EFI device paths

macOS nvram boot variables, device properties, EFI device paths - gfxutil.sh
gist.github.com gist.github.com
 
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