Mac Pro 1,1 and switching from Win7 to OSX

[hannibal2]

Hey everybody,

i read and tried a lot about this but since I haven't succeeded, I am turning to you knowledgable folks

Alright so here it is: I am running a Mac Pro 1,1 (MP) with El Capitan (EC)(pike boot.efi) and Windows 7 via bootcamp. I have a non-osx card GTX 660 in the MP which works like a charm. However, as you know you can't see the boot screen. I tried 'blindly' selecting the drives when holding alt after the chime at startup but that somehow doesn't work well. Win7 will start, EC not.

So I decided to do it via software. In EC I selected Win7 to be the startup disk. This works fine. However, how can i switch from Win7 to EC? I cannot do it via the bootcamp program in Win7 because it doesn't work. I tried installing the whole bootcamp drivers package, that didn't work. It told me my machine doesn't support x64. So I installed most drivers by hand. Everything works fine, but I still don't have the little bootcamp icon in the task bar and when I want to launch it manually Win7 just won't start it. So I tried installing the bootcamp driver package another way (http://tsentas.net/bootcamp-x64-unsupported/). Installation went fine, but after a restart I ended up with a Blue Screen and I had to F2, F8 and then select 'start the last Win config that worked' or something like that (don't remember the exact words).

So, this is my dilemma. Any ideas how i can boot from Win7 to OSX without the bootcamp task bar program?

Thanks guys.

 

[ActionableMango]

Hold down X during startup. That will boot OS X instead of Windows.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255

 

[hannibal2]

will try right away

Edit: doesnt work. Windows is still starting. the apple website says to press X when the chime is starting. I guess I have to mention that I have a El Capitan version that works and a Lion partition that doesn't anymore. The latter is somehow corrupted. maybe that's why the x-command isn't working?

Could I format the lion partition (from which I installed Win7) so that I am only left with El Cap and Win7? Or will that mess up my Win7 (bootcamp)?

 

[ActionableMango]

If these operating systems are on different drives, you can just pull the drives you don't want (with the power off of course). If OS X is the only drive in there, it's the only one you can boot to. Obviously not optimal for frequent use, but at least you would verify that OS X is still bootable and working.

Does your keyboard work at all in the preboot environment? Maybe your computer isn't even getting the "X" command. For example, my wireless keyboard only works sporadically for boot time keyboard commands, but my wired one works 100% of the time. To test your keyboard, do the PRAM reset command (CMD-OPT-P-R) right after the chime...you should hear a second chime after a few seconds. That will verify your keyboard is working in the preboot environment.

 

[hannibal2]

If these operating systems are on different drives, you can just pull the drives you don't want (with the power off of course). If OS X is the only drive in there, it's the only one you can boot to. Obviously not optimal for frequent use, but at least you would verify that OS X is still bootable and working.

Does your keyboard work at all in the preboot environment? Maybe your computer isn't even getting the "X" command. For example, my wireless keyboard only works sporadically for boot time keyboard commands, but my wired one works 100% of the time. To test your keyboard, do the PRAM reset command (CMD-OPT-P-R) right after the chime...you should hear a second chime after a few seconds. That will verify your keyboard is working in the preboot environment.

My 1st HDD hast 2 partitions. One with Lion and one with El Cap. My 2nd HDD has only Win7 on it.

It is an wired apple keyboard and works fine pre-boot. I tried alt at chime with the original Mac GPU card and I was always able to get into the boot option menu. Other ideas? Isn't there a little tool for Win7 that lets you choose on which operating system you restart?

 

[ActionableMango]

My 1st HDD hast 2 partitions. One with Lion and one with El Cap. My 2nd HDD has only Win7 on it.

It is an wired apple keyboard and works fine pre-boot. I tried alt at chime with the original Mac GPU card and I was always able to get into the boot option menu. Other ideas? Isn't there a little tool for Win7 that lets you choose on which operating system you restart?

The only little tool I'm aware of is the one provided by Apple that you can't install or run. Maybe someone else knows of one.

Did you do the NVRAM reset and hear the second chime? That wasn't just to check the keyboard, it also clears the selection for the startup disk so you should boot after that into OS X again.

 

[hannibal2]

The only little tool I'm aware of is the one provided by Apple that you can't install or run. Maybe someone else knows of one.

Did you do the NVRAM reset and hear the second chime? That wasn't just to check the keyboard, it also clears the selection for the startup disk so you should boot after that into OS X again.

Just did the PRAM reset. Now the MP doesn't boot into windows anymore but instead the screen stays black. I guess it tries to get into my broken Lion partition. So could I try to format my Lion partition or will that mess up my win7 drive? Maybe then it will try to boot into my El Cap, when i press x on startup?

 

[Nunyabinez]

My 1st HDD hast 2 partitions. One with Lion and one with El Cap. My 2nd HDD has only Win7 on it.

It is an wired apple keyboard and works fine pre-boot. I tried alt at chime with the original Mac GPU card and I was always able to get into the boot option menu. Other ideas? Isn't there a little tool for Win7 that lets you choose on which operating system you restart?

I would second the idea of pulling your Win 7 drive out and rebooting. The only other option is to borrow a Mac Video Card from someone. For a long-term solution I would suggest getting an external case for your Windows drive. That way you can use pref panel to boot into Windows and then shut down, disconnect the drive and boot into OS X.
[doublepost=1458672869][/doublepost]

The only little tool I'm aware of is the one provided by Apple that you can't install or run. Maybe someone else knows of one.

Did you do the NVRAM reset and hear the second chime? That wasn't just to check the keyboard, it also clears the selection for the startup disk so you should boot after that into OS X again.

I also have a Mac Pro with a non-Mac card in it. Even using the wired keyboard I could never get it to work using the option key and blindly arrowing to the other partitions. I don't know why.

 

[hannibal2]

Ok, so I followed your suggestion and pulled out the windows drive. but is doesn't boot. My El Cap partition worked earlier when I replaced my GTX 660 with my old Mac GPU. I guess the MP is trying to boot from my corrupted Lion partition. Why can't I just format that sucker ?

I also tried to to start El Cap with my 2 GPUs installed. That didn't work too well, though. Plus I'd have to swap the monitor cable every time when booting. Additionally I didn't like that setup because the old Mac GPU became awfully hot.

I have an external case but it is usb 2.0. wouldn't that be fairly slow? especially when playing games etc?

Edit: After I pulled out the windows drive and inserted it again, windows doesn't boot anymore. even though it was the startup volume before. Thats not very nice. I'll try to pull out the OSX drive (Lion and El Cap) and see if it still works.

Edit 2: puuh, windows partition is still working

 

[ActionableMango]

I guess the MP is trying to boot from my corrupted Lion partition. Why can't I just format that sucker ?

Perhaps you can. I have no experience with multiple OS X partitions on a single drive so I haven't been saying anything about it. If you have nothing to lose

I also tried to to start El Cap with my 2 GPUs installed. That didn't work too well, though.

I'm curious what happened. If you can see boot screens, can you see both El Cap and Lion? And El Cap will boot but not Lion?

I guess if El Cap boots you can do that and then go forth with your plan to delete Lion.

 

[hannibal2]

Perhaps you can. I have no experience with multiple OS X partitions on a single drive so I haven't been saying anything about it. If you have nothing to lose



I'm curious what happened. If you can see boot screens, can you see both El Cap and Lion? And El Cap will boot but not Lion?

I guess if El Cap boots you can do that and then go forth with your plan to delete Lion.

Ok, have you ever had 2 drives, one with Win (bootcamp) and one with OSX? and then formatted the OSX drive? did that effect the Win drive? Right now I have to pull out the OSX drive every time and can't even use any of my OSX partitions. Not really a good situation

When I had the 2 GPUs installed the old Mac GPU became really hot. I started using the monitor on the old Mac GPU and it was fine. When I went plugged it into the GTX 660, the login screen froze. That hasn't happened before when I started El Cap with just the GTX in there.

Does anyone have an idea why the bootcamp drivers are giving me trouble?

 

[Machines]

I have no experience with multiple OS X partitions on a single drive so I haven't been saying anything about it.

You can install several partitions on a single drive , each with an OS X install . They will be individually bootable when you access Start Up Manager (AKA Boot Manager) . Press Option Key at Start Up and the OS choices are displayed on your screen . This only works with a graphics card with EFI , of course . I don't believe the OP has one , though .

 

[ActionableMango]

Ok, have you ever had 2 drives, one with Win (bootcamp) and one with OSX? and then formatted the OSX drive? did that effect the Win drive? Right now I have to pull out the OSX drive every time and can't even use any of my OSX partitions. Not really a good situation

When I had the 2 GPUs installed the old Mac GPU became really hot. I started using the monitor on the old Mac GPU and it was fine. When I went plugged it into the GTX 660, the login screen froze. That hasn't happened before when I started El Cap with just the GTX in there.

Anyone an idea why the bootcamp drivers are giving me trouble?

Yes, I've had 1 Windows and 1 OS X drive, formatted the OS X drive and and Windows drive was not affected.

I don't know much about installing unsupported bootcamp drivers on older Macs, but the blue screen implies that one (or more) of the system drivers among the many that you manually installed is not compatible with your hardware. If there is a way to identify what each installer is inside the bootcamp package, then I would try installing just the Boot Camp utility that goes in the toolbar and not any of the other hardware drivers. But I don't know what that

For example, Boot Camp 6 is not supported on my 5,1 MP, but I absolutely needed two specific drivers from it, so I installed those two only (AppleHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys). I didn't know if any of the other drivers are compatible with my hardware, so I didn't install any of the others.

 

[Nunyabinez]

Ok, so I followed your suggestion and pulled out the windows drive. but is doesn't boot. My El Cap partition worked earlier when I replaced my GTX 660 with my old Mac GPU. I guess the MP is trying to boot from my corrupted Lion partition. Why can't I just format that sucker ?

I also tried to to start El Cap with my 2 GPUs installed. That didn't work too well, though. Plus I'd have to swap the monitor cable every time when booting. Additionally I didn't like that setup because the old Mac GPU became awfully hot.

I have an external case but it is usb 2.0. wouldn't that be fairly slow? especially when playing games etc?

Edit: After I pulled out the windows drive and inserted it again, windows doesn't boot anymore. even though it was the startup volume before. Thats not very nice. I'll try to pull out the OSX drive (Lion and El Cap) and see if it still works.

Edit 2: puuh, windows partition is still working

I'm a little confused. If you have an EFI capable graphics card, put that one in by itself and use the option key to get into El Cap. The reality is that you are going to have to make a sacrifice if you need Boot Camp. Either you will have to put Windows on an external drive and deal with the slowness, or invest in a good EFI graphics card.

You could get a USB 3.0 card and a USB 3.0 enclosure and that would be fairly quick. I have one in my Mac Pro and it works great. But, as I said, you're going to have to spend some money if you want to have access to dual booting.

 

[ActionableMango]

I have an external case but it is usb 2.0. wouldn't that be fairly slow? especially when playing games etc?

Forget all the USB advice.

First of all, Windows won't run on an external drive without a hack (or a special version of Windows Enterprise). But even if you do the hack or have that version, on a USB 2.0 drive it will be extremely slow.

Secondly, USB 3.0 won't fix the speed problem. You can't boot anything on a USB 3.0 card in a cMP at all. The Mac Pro's EFI doesn't have USB 3.0 drivers so it doesn't know what to do with the card at boot time and doesn't see any of the connected drives. The USB 3.0 card only works later after the OS has booted and loaded the USB 3.0 drivers.

I believe the proper path forward for you is:

• Get your El Cap partition working again
• To get to Windows from OS X, use Startup Disk
• To get to OS X from Windows, use "X" to boot into OS X (which should work when you have a working bootable OS X again)

As for the boot camp toolbar in Windows not installing, I'd ask for help for that specific problem in the Windows, Linux, & Others on Mac subforum, where there are a lot more bootcamp experts.

 

[owbp]

Btw, if you ever want to try BootCamp's own reboot option again, run setup from Command Prompt (start it as Admin).
Navigate to the folder where you BootCamp64.msi is (X:/Drivers/Apple) and run BootCamp64.msi with msiexec /i command: /Drivers/Apple/msiexec /i BootCamp64.msi

If blues screen comes on the reboot, you need to boot in safe mode and disable AppleHFS.sys and ApleMNT.sys drivers in C:/Windows/System32/drivers folder. Just rename them to AppleHFS.sys.BACKUP and AppleMNT.sys.BACKUP. They are usually the problem.
Or you can disable them prior to reboot if you don't need to access your HFS partitions and dont wanna risk it.

Im running 10.11.4 and Win7 x64 on my MP1,1 with PC HD6850 and have no problem using BootCamp restart in OSX option.

 

[ActionableMango]

^^^^^ This guy is the expert you needed.

 

[owbp]

Thank you so much, but i've just spent too many hours on these problems (make bootable DVD, install without hickups and enable drivers) so i have learned them by heart.

 

[hannibal2]

Thanks for all of these Tips. @owbp I tried 'msiexec' before but never bothered to rename the .sys files. I found it in a forum from 2011 and people there complained that they had a blue screen after attaching external HDDs. I didnt attach one though.

Edit:I tried it owbp's way entirely but to no success. Blue screen starts up as usual and I cannot even get into safe mode command mode because before the drivers are fully loaded the blue screen comes on. or how to you mean to rename the files in safe mode?
Well, anyway, I renamed the files before restarting. renaming went fine but the blue screen still came up.

I thought I found a workaround for the Boot Camp Utility in my task bar! I did it like described in this article here under Method 3: http://www.intowindows.com/fix-boot-camp-icon-is-missing-from-taskbar-system-tray/. The Boot Camp Utility starts now but when I want to change boot disks it says that and error occured. Oh brother...

@Nunyabinez I have an old Mac GPU but it is really slow and not useable in everyday use. I only use it when i need to do something in Recovery mode.

Edit 2: Lion is up and running again. However, it doesn't start when I press and hold x on startup. So now I cannot start it at all with my GTX 660.

Do you know whether the Nvidia GTX 660 is flashable? I looked around in the netkas forum but couldn't find much.
[doublepost=1458725248][/doublepost]Wow, this is becoming more and more mysterious. So When I alt at chime and try to blindly navigate (GTX 660) to the Lion or El Cap partition nothing happens. I can hear the HDD a bit but there is no signal coming to the monitor. However when I pull out the Win7 Disk and just leave the OSX disk with the two OSX partitions in there is a signal coming through. It's a white fast blinking dash in the top left corner. Other than that, nothing happens. Any thoughts?

 

[owbp]

When booting into windows, you should press&hold F8 as the white screen appears and then once more when it ends (even on PC GPU you'll see white screen and then flashing bar in the upper left corner - sort of BOIS emulation). That way you'll be 100% sure to boot into win options and select boot into safe mode. The other thing that can cause blue screen, AFAIK, are the old GPU drivers... I have always made my bootcamp partition, installation and initial setup with 7300GT for troubleshooting purposes.

You're seeing blue screen after BootCamp Drivers install? Beforehand you can normally restart you Win7?
If that is the case, check your BC Drivers version, it should be 4.0.4033 (you can check it in BootCamp(64).xml file). At least, thats what works for me.

Regarding booting blind, reset PRAM (option+command+P+R) and your Mac will boot to whatever is first in your HDD Slot 1. If you're not careful when pressing you key combination, you can end up booting in Recovery partition (Mac sees that you pressed R), but then again i would do all this with 7300GT.

So, to recap:
-use original Mac GPU for now
-install newest nVidia drivers
-check you BootCamp Drivers version (*be sure to reinstall nVidia drivers if BC installation overwrites them)

If that doesn't work, and i really didn't find any other problem online for blue screen other than HFS&MNT drivers and nVidia drivers, well have to start from scratch.

 

[orph]

ah OWBP's post reminded me you can always use the recovery boot mode to boot in to the recovery os then from there chose to boot in to osx then fix your problems once it's booted.
might be worth installing osx on a usb stick in case you ever need to trouble shoot something like this.

 

[Nunyabinez]

@Nunyabinez I have an old Mac GPU but it is really slow and not useable in everyday use. I only use it when i need to do something in Recovery mode.

That's what I was suggesting, using that card to get your OS X issues cleared up. Sometimes you have to resort to painful processes to fix things. Last night I upgraded my 2,1 to 10.11.4 which of course borked it, but i had used super duper to clone to an external drive. I booted to that drive through USB (painfully slow even after the boot was complete) and copied the correct files in place to resurrect my internal drive.

 

[ActionableMango]

Isn't there a little tool for Win7 that lets you choose on which operating system you restart?

I suppose this is a bit late, but I just happened across this tool and I remembered your question.

http://www.easyuefi.com/index-us.html

Huge disclaimer - I have not tried this myself. I have no idea if this will work on a Mac, and it does not show "OS X" in its list of supported destination operating systems.