Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MacPro as a Windows Gaming Machine
- Thread starter xn3xterx
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I would not call anything that involves using FAT32 or xFAT as solved. Filesystems from the devil.
Find an NTFS solution.
Last edited:
Hello crjackson2134 !
you've mentionned winclone and the fact that it can only restore to the original disk.. that ringed a bell.. because i've tried for the past few days to clone a ssd drive with windows 7 installed on it (legacy mode boot and formatted in NTFS) installed in my mac pro 5. I've tried with winclone 6 and 7 to no avail :
-Cloning disk to disk failed when it was "scanning the source", it got stuck EACH time at the beginning of the progress bar.
-Cloning the disk to an image and restoring image to the destination disk worked ! BUT : when you boot on the newly formatted and cloned disk it gives you a BSOD EACH TIME after the first boot image is displayed and (even on the SAME mac pro with the SAME drivers !!!)
My first intention was to clone my windows SSd (installed on my mac pro 5) and to put the clone on my mac pro 4 ... BSOD after the first loading screen of windows.. i've tried to put the cloned disk inside the mac pro 5 (the one with the source drive !!! so same drivers and all, no excuses !) => same BSOD each time...
Can you enlighten me in regards of that pretty annoying situation ... Because if i can't clone that disk that also means i'll NEVER get the chance to save my windows disk in case of trouble...
Thanks for your input !
$ps: ive tried in predos mode with acronis true image, does not work either.. is it THAT hard to clone a windows disk ??? it took me like 25 minutes to clone my High Sierra disk with super duper !!!! for Christ sake..
Okay,
First, let me say I’m sorry for your frustrations. These annoyances are the reason I moved away from windows to begin with.
Now, this is what I believe is going on here.
Microsoft changed the way it protects it’s self from piracy. When you install Windows, the installation is tied directly to the Disk UUID and the Partition UUID. In this way, you can make an image of the install, and restore it back to the same physical drive as often as you like, with no issues whatsoever. However, if you move that drive to a different location, Windows is aware and generally won’t boot (even on the same machine, let alone a different machine with same hardware). Even if you place the whole drive in another machine, you then run into the problem of a different hardware hash, since it’s a different machine altogether.
When you try to restore the image to a different drive, the Disk UUID, and Partition UUID don’t match what’s on the image, so that won’t work either.
I believe, but haven’t tested yet, that if you use WinClone or any other migration tool (on the same computer) to migrate from one drive/volume to another drive/volume (because the tool updates the install with the new UUID’s). So Volume to Volume cloning should work, whereas Volume>Image>NewVolume won’t work. I hope that’s clear.
All that said, this is all only good for changing disks connected to the very same machine.
There is also a helper tool built in to Windows. I’ve never used it, but running the sysprep tool (probably administrator’s command line tool) is supposed to prep Windows so that you can copy or image it in such a way that it CAN be restored onto a different drive in a new machine. I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know how well this works, if at all. I just gleened that from reading other posts.
None of this probably helps you get the job done, but that’s all (I Think) I know about it...
Good Luck...
And BTW, if you format the drive to ExFat or Fat32, this lets the legacy boot mode of the CD detect the volume properly whereby it will promptly convert it to NTFS for the install. WinClone does the same thing. It will convert an ExFad or Win32 drive to NTFS when restoring the image.
First, let me say I’m sorry for your frustrations. These annoyances are the reason I moved away from windows to begin with.
Now, this is what I believe is going on here.
Microsoft changed the way it protects it’s self from piracy. When you install Windows, the installation is tied directly to the Disk UUID and the Partition UUID. In this way, you can make an image of the install, and restore it back to the same physical drive as often as you like, with no issues whatsoever. However, if you move that drive to a different location, Windows is aware and generally won’t boot (even on the same machine, let alone a different machine with same hardware). Even if you place the whole drive in another machine, you then run into the problem of a different hardware hash, since it’s a different machine altogether.
When you try to restore the image to a different drive, the Disk UUID, and Partition UUID don’t match what’s on the image, so that won’t work either.
I believe, but haven’t tested yet, that if you use WinClone or any other migration tool (on the same computer) to migrate from one drive/volume to another drive/volume (because the tool updates the install with the new UUID’s). So Volume to Volume cloning should work, whereas Volume>Image>NewVolume won’t work. I hope that’s clear.
All that said, this is all only good for changing disks connected to the very same machine.
There is also a helper tool built in to Windows. I’ve never used it, but running the sysprep tool (probably administrator’s command line tool) is supposed to prep Windows so that you can copy or image it in such a way that it CAN be restored onto a different drive in a new machine. I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know how well this works, if at all. I just gleened that from reading other posts.
None of this probably helps you get the job done, but that’s all (I Think) I know about it...
Good Luck...
And BTW, if you format the drive to ExFat or Fat32, this lets the legacy boot mode of the CD detect the volume properly whereby it will promptly convert it to NTFS for the install. WinClone does the same thing. It will convert an ExFad or Win32 drive to NTFS when restoring the image.
Last edited:
thanks for your input
I've tried indeed that part for sure : "if you use WinClone or any other migration tool (on the same computer) that you can migrate from one drive to another (because the tool updates the install with the new UUID’s)."
=> i've installed in my mac pro 5 (the one with a SSD in NTFS and bootcamp on it already), a samsung EVO 860 formatted in FAT and let winclone do its job. It always fails to clone disk to disk for some reason so i rely on disk to image and restore image to the destination disk.
Well, even on the SAME machine (the mac pro 5), the newly cloned samsung gives me a BSOD after the first start up screen of win 7... Which is truly unexplainable for me... i've thought about this signature thing that's why i've tried on the same machine... but inexplicably it doesn't work either... let alone that, of course, it won't work in the mac pro4 .. all the more !! and the BSOD is strictly the same !
"windows shut down to prevent any harm to your computer, remove any peripheral newly installed etc etc.. run chdsk /f etc etc"
Sorry, I don’t know what to tell you. I finally got mine working again, but only after making sure my drives were all in the same configuration as when originally installed. I guess it changes a machine hardware hash or something even when just moving drives.
I don’t get it, and I freaking hate Windows. I only have it for 2 reasons. My wife needs it for work software that specifically requires Windows, and I use it for tuning software for my cars. My vehicle software and hardware required for systems tuning (engine timing, fuel pressure, air/fuel mixture, cam timing, boost, etc... only works on windows). So it’s kind of a must have for some things, but it really SUCKS IMHO.
I don’t get it, and I freaking hate Windows. I only have it for 2 reasons. My wife needs it for work software that specifically requires Windows, and I use it for tuning software for my cars. My vehicle software and hardware required for systems tuning (engine timing, fuel pressure, air/fuel mixture, cam timing, boost, etc... only works on windows). So it’s kind of a must have for some things, but it really SUCKS IMHO.
And you don't understand Windows booting or licensing either. It's not simply based on disk UUIDs, and it actually does handle most situations where a valid licensed system is moved from disk to disk.
If you're not following the rules for your Windows license, your
mileage will vary.
yes alright but why is there so many people here who seem to have no trouble doing the exact same thing, and even some more complicated ones... If you read some bootcamp threads on macrumors, you'll notice that it's not unusual to see people write about how easy it was to clone their bootcamp disk and put it on another disk or/and another mac, even resizing partition in the process and so forth etcetc or simply recover their hard drive *which i cannot do either cause the problem is the same anyway*... am i missing something obvious here ?
edit : i'll add to that the fact that i don't have the feeling it has anything to do with its licensing system anyway.. the way the BSOD is displayed (AFTER the windows bootscreen) and what it writes inside... I would say it's quite possibly a driver corruption issue.. (maybe i'm wrong or the infos the BSOD gives are really useless..)
But let's put it that way : would a licensing problem give you a BSOD in the first place ? Besides it's a valid license i'm using + on the SAME machine with SAME hardware (the goal is to put it on the mac pro 4 at the end).. But even on the same machine it doesn't work to begin with ... i know i'm not the brightest person ever but clearly i'm doing something dumb/wrong here if some people with nearly the same hardware and software manage to do it.
edit : i'll add to that the fact that i don't have the feeling it has anything to do with its licensing system anyway.. the way the BSOD is displayed (AFTER the windows bootscreen) and what it writes inside... I would say it's quite possibly a driver corruption issue.. (maybe i'm wrong or the infos the BSOD gives are really useless..)
But let's put it that way : would a licensing problem give you a BSOD in the first place ? Besides it's a valid license i'm using + on the SAME machine with SAME hardware (the goal is to put it on the mac pro 4 at the end).. But even on the same machine it doesn't work to begin with ... i know i'm not the brightest person ever but clearly i'm doing something dumb/wrong here if some people with nearly the same hardware and software manage to do it.
Last edited:
I don’t know friend. I’ve had a lot of trouble too, yes mine is a valid copy I purchased for my Mac specifically too.
I wish I had the answer, but I can only guess. It took me 3 days to get mine working again, but I was never able to install it on the SSD I wanted. I may try again some other time, but I need about a week alone, and plenty of blood pressure meds before I’ll try again
ahahah yeah i feel you on the meds, it's quite frustrating indeed.. even when you try to do things the "right way" (no piracy involved, playing by the book, following official guides etc).. and you stumble upon those trouble at the end it's just annoying to say the least
I'll try to dig it a little bit more... well maybe i 'll start a new thread for that problem and see if some knowledgeable people here can enlighten us on that matter.. after all, it's what a forum is for right ?
I'll try to dig it a little bit more... well maybe i 'll start a new thread for that problem and see if some knowledgeable people here can enlighten us on that matter.. after all, it's what a forum is for right ?
I’d like a fool proof method too. Start the thread and I’ll lurk... Maybe someone can figure out what’s going on. I sure don’t know. I didn’t think it was ever going to work again. I moved a totally unrelated SSD around and bang! Windows worked again. Perhaps it was a hardware conflict, but macOS never had an issue.
yeah i'll start a new thread with bootcamp and winclone as the main keywords to see if someone has had any chance to get a full proof method..
Just for completeness, my issue also started after adding a Samsung 860 EVO to transfer my windows install to.
I have now Running Windows on my Second MacPro. Its 10-15% slower as a normal I7 Skylake PC. But its ok. I have now a RX580 with 8GB. It is a little slow to play with 3 Monitors. What ist the best Graphic Card for the MacPro for Windows and MacOSX. A Vega 64 ?? and which one. I think there is a problem with the Fans under MacOSX
Noooooooo!!! Don't use ExFAT. That is designed for flash cards like a MicroSD. You will have trouble.
I know from personal experience.
I don’t use exfat, I formatted to exfat and let Windows and/or Winclone convert it to NTFS. It doesn’t matter if you select Fat32 or exfat, it gets recognized by Windows or Wonclone and forces a reformat to NTFS.Noooooooo!!! Don't use ExFAT. That is designed for flash cards like a MicroSD. You will have trouble.
I know from personal experience.
This is actually the recommended method. And exfat isn't inherently bad, it just isn't meant for any file over 4 gb.