Firmware Uefi Windows 10
Gema Shisila
The long list of numbers after the windows boot entry is additional data generated by the OEM motherboard firmware. Currently I have the windows boot manager entry disabled, so my system skips it and boots directly to GRUB.
1. Changing any value in the boot order list in the UEFI firmware menu and saving just crashes and freezes the UEFI firmware menu.
2. Trying to restore defaults in the UEFI firmware menu also crashes and freezes.
3. Acer (I'm using a Nitro AN515-55-54Q0) infuriatingly only released firmware updates as .exe files, and I'm on the latest version, so I can't re-flash
4. Deleting the windows boot entry with efibootmgr and rebooting just means the motherboard firmware regenerates the same windows boot manager entry
I'm afraid that removing the CMOS will brick my system since trying to reset to default values just crashes and freezes the UEFI firmware menu. I suspect this has something to do with the UEFI menu reading from NVRAM, and I think I can manipulate those values through efivar but I'm unsure which value or how to go about doing that. The weird part is that, as mentioned above, the boot entries show up just fine on the boot device menu when spamming F12.
I'm sure you've checked this wiki page right? I've had (it is extremely rare) a CMOS battery die in an old computer before and putting a brand new battery in was the solution. However, I think in this case it is best to double check this wiki page and perhaps resizing the partition and doing the recommended install again.
Tried re-installing grub, still had the same issue in the UEFI firmware menu. I did find out that removing the UEFI boot entry for GRUB from Windows returned my boot menu to normal, so at the very least that works. I'll probably chalk it up to crappy mobo firmware and move on, and just keep the windows boot manage entry disabled and boot solely from grub.
In the menu dialogue when you first startup the computer it should have all the boot options available. Can't you just prioritize which bootup you want? Also, I have it where only UEFI capable devices/drives bootup. Perhaps you could temporarily switch it back to legacy mode just to see whats what. Either way like I said the last time something like that happened I had to switch out my CMOS battery.
I'm pretty sure by the UEFI standard that if a device isn't present on boot then it removes the firmware entry. You could try physically unplugging the storage, powering on when it isn't present to clear the entry, and then powering off and reconnecting it. Then do your grub-install or whatnot to create a new entry in your firmware listing. It really sounds like a firmware bug though, your firmware should never freeze - if it does there are problems.
Not being able to change the boot order is the problem. Just tried re-installing grub as removable, making sure to mv EFI/boot/bootx64.efi out of the way, and that didn't change anything. I'll just stick with my workaround of disabling the UEFI boot entry for windows boot manager, that way I can go directly into GRUB.
The strangest part is that I remember my UEFI firmware working just fine with Ubuntu and grub, for some reason it just doesn't like this arch entry. Maybe when i have more time i'll completely reinstall windows, then reinstall ubuntu as dual boot to see how that distro handles the efi files.
I now have a "working" Windows 10 installation running under EFI mode on an older Macbook. (This includes Wifi, LAN Port, On-Screen Display, Touchpad (including two-finger and bottom left click right click) volume control, keyboard backlight and backlight brightness control and other basic functionality.
When a driver or windows driver update goes bad, I get a Windows corn-blue screen of death telling me that Windows is unable to startup, followed by a couple of minutes of Windows Startup Repair, which will ultimately fail. I then have to go to Advanced Troubleshooting and choose the System Restore Point options to get to the last restore point. Occasionally my restore points get corrupted, and I either cannot restore, or I get a "Unable to restore, file system has not been changed" message, however I get back into Windows and the restore point has indeed been rolled back (Thanks M$!)
The reason for posting this is that this forum advises to roll back to Win8 on Bootcamp or ask the Windows forums, and the Windows forum advises to "pack up the macbook in the box it came in, return it to the store and get a proper laptop". Since I don't want to do either of those, I figured I'd see how far I can push Win10 before drivers / updates come from either monolithic corporation to make the process easier.
You have not yet tested Audio and other esoteric multi-channel Digital Audio. As an experiment, this is fine and dandy. If you need a properly functional Windows/OSX dual-boot, W8.1/Yosemite (or W8.1/Mavericks) is a lot more stable.
This definitely is not to be considered *stable* solution, rather as a foundation to point folks in the right direction, as I am seeing tons of posts about Win10, and probably more to come with the auto-"upgrade" feature that Win7 and Win8 will present users.
It's a shame I didn't stick with Maverick, Yosemite's boot time is at least 3 times longer than EFI Win10 on the same hardware (I will get a stop watch going to give accurate times soon). I would like to see Mavericks boot time comparatively as I recall this was way better, but I need at least *one* working OS On this system, so I cannot downgrade right now.
I definitely appreciate all the facets of every OS, if I had a 750Gig drive in this MBP I'd most likely be triple booting into Linux as well, especially as an app dev it makes sense to have as many test environments as possible.
I am still not sure I understand the differences between pre and post 2013 macs and the UEFI. If I understand, between 2006 (First Intel Mac) and 2013, they used a proprietary Apple EFI standard, and post-2013 they switched to UEFI?
I got stuck on System Restore post-BootCamp.msi installation, but thanks to this post Some known issues with boot camp 5.1 with windows 10 from gingersome I managed to fix this. (Killing HFS Read support, so I will need to download a third party driver or wait until I don't need restore points anymore)
I then manually installed the Cirrus boot camp driver, and can confirm that I am able to make some pinging noises from MS sound scheme panel as well as a test MP3 via Windows Media player, and checked over earphones that stereo is working. Volume control also separates earphone versus internal speaker volume settings nicely.
UEFI 2.x is an Intel standard which addresses the limitations of the legacy BIOS system and is supported on GPT disks. It has a backward compatibility layer called CSM-BIOS (Compatibility Support Module) BIOS. This allows legacy OS installations on more modern hardware and is slower and has limitations.
Macs prior to Late 2013 have used EFI 1.1. To allow legacy Windows versions to be installed on Macs, Macs use CSM-BIOS to emulate older PCs and BIOS. This layer has no user interface unlike PCs. CSM-BIOS on Macs will hide/expose hardware as necessary at the appropriate lever (firmware/hardware) so device drivers appropriately. For example an integrated GPU with onboard Audio decoding will split the graphics and audio part and expose these as separate devices. If this is broken, GPUs may get exposed, which the OS cannot handle. Intel drivers do not know what to do with an nVidia GPU and vice-a-versa. If Windows does not appropriately handle dual-GPUs, it will crash.
More modern Macs have a combined analog/digital jack which can either output 2-channel Analog Stereo Audio. A mini-TOSLink (S/PDIF) is a digital output from the jack and allows 5.1 Audio channels which can go to an appropriate decoder and allow 5.1 surround sound. Please for a description and connector details.
I unfortunately do not have any S/PDIF devices to test on, although in Windows 10 Audio panel the "Digital Audio (S/PDIF)" device by Cirrus Logic has a status of "Ready". I also notice several HDMI digital audio devices, presumably accessible via the Displayport, but I have no DP -> HDMI adapter to test this on either, and as such they have a status of "Not plugged in".
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