Mr._Moal

Finally got Windows 8.1 to do what I want. I'll list some of the things I came across and how to deal with them. The following is NOT a walk thru, but rather helpful ideas during your own problem solving journey with Windows 8.1 Long story short, I have the ThunderTek (TB1) plugged into my mac, and a GTX 760 plugged into it powering a 2560 x 1600 monitor, and everything is working (main display of the MBP is disabled, but for whatever reason, likes to display the windows start up symbol. World of tanks runs on max graphics with 35 to 50 fps, so I'm very happy. Thanks to all the guys who came before the pioneer for those that followed. Don't create the partition thru Disk Utility or Bootcamp. rather, select your drive, and make it smaller. then you will be left with empty space. now when you are installing windows, you will see this empty space, and you can create a partition. windows will add its own small recovery partition. and this partition will / probably cause you problems later, (Disk Utility refuses to delete or modify this partition). a way to handle this is mentioned further down.. Creating a system restore point: right click windows (bottom Left) / system / system protection select your drive / configure / turn on system protection / apply now "create" your system restore point, and give it a legible name. - Cause for me : the driver for the integrated graphics is bad - igdkmd64.sys driver does not work. may also get a blue screen of death with the following message: "SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (igdkmd64)" - my solution - do not install the "igdkmd64.sys" driver in the first place. After creating the USB installer disk, search for "igdkmd64" and delete it. This is ok since there is a default driver that can take over. this leads to the next problem: caused by the default driver for the MBP's integrated graphics being reinstalled for you. Windows has a Device Installation helper that notices the faulty / non present igdkmd64 driver, and kindly goes and gets it for you and installs it. this promptly causes the system to crash. - solution - don't allow windows to automatically install drivers Right click windows / system / advanced system settings / hardware / device installation settings choose NO, and NEVER. Be aware that now you have stopped windows from being "helpful", which in this situation was causing the crash, but in other situations where you normally expect devices to be installed for you, they will not be. - when it comes time to install boot camp drivers, the installation of the NVIDIA drivers causes a crash, and upon start up, the screen in black. - open the boot camp folder, and remove the entire NVIDIA folder containing the drivers. I moved this folder to the desk top and renamed it just to be safe. - I should also note that while on my mac side, I also edited the Bootcamp.xml using Xcode, and removed references to NVIDIA display stuff, and the two sections that referenced the faulty igdkmd64.sys. (by remove, I mean deleting the entire entry, starting at <name> ... to ... </name> - I don't know if this is required, or if the BootCamp installer will complain about missing the NVIDIA folder full of drivers if it looks for them. I assume at this point you are comfortable with re installing windows. I certainly am, for all the times I've broke it. one further thing I have found: basically, if you create a partition thru the windows installer instead of thru boot camp, then the Disk Utility from mac can't do anything with it. rather than reformatting the whole drive, grab a windows installation disk, get to the point where you can format the drives, select the offending partition and delete it. just remember that you can delete ANYTHING, and its a great place to muck up your mac side. now when you return to Disk Utility, you will see empty space. Disk Utility will happily handle stuff from there. After some reading up, its because the laptop can't handle 2 dedicated graphics cards at once (i.e. the dedicated graphics and the eGPU) basically, disable the MBP's Dedicated graphics, and re boot (with eGPU attached, AND you got all the drivers for it installed and operational already !). just do a system restore point, as disabling your currently working display adaptor should make you twitch a little (yes, I've disabled my only working display adaptor and then wondered why I get a blank screen afterwards... sigh)

Unigine valley tool was rather nice to watch. At a resolution of 1600x1200 and everything maxed, managed to scrap a score of 1161 (Mac OS ). My brother with his PC and a AMD Radion R9 280X got a 1363. to get such a similar score on (reasonably/relatively) similar performing cards is not half bad. Now getting my set up to work on bootcamps been another matter. Once that happens I'll be very interested to see how the mac compares to the windows in boot camp. All in all, thanks for the walk thrus, and all the work people have done to allow us less teck savy foke get set up and running. Incidentally, after breaking things, I re install maveriks and did an update today, and when I followed the instructions on editing the plist, I found the the last item (.../AppleHDAController.key/.../Info.plist) did not exist. When I entered the path (both by copying and carefully typing out) I get an empty file, with [ New File ] across the bottom of the terminal. That file existed and I edited it the first time I modified stuff. Maybe the recent update removed it?

i have now tried these instructions multiple (12 fresh installs using usb or DVD installs) times over this week to no avail. Any attempt to use a cd to make a efi windows does not work. do you know any work around to get a windows system working, or should I just look at setting up the PCI Reset Delay circuit? Edit 09-20-2014 I have "successfully" made win 8.1 install on my mac in EFI mode, and the ThunderTek eGPU 760 will now show up in the device manager. * This was accomplished after I created a WinInstall USB drive using Bootcamp, then searched thru it for the offending Graphics card driver ( igdkmd64.sys ) and deleted it. After this windows was able to successfully install with out crashing. * Bootcamp will consistently go blank screen when it installs the NVIDIA drivers. If you remove these from the bootcamp folder (not the best solution) then at least Bootcamp doesn't crash it. However. windows seems like it wants to be helpful, and something is installing drivers for the Basic Display Adapter (the integrated graphics) and then you get the blue screen of death with message reading "SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (IGDKMD64.SYS)" I assume something is trying to be helpful and install the default drivers for the integrated graphics which then promptly crash to blue screen. -- I need some way to permanently silence the integrated graphics. after that I'm home free.

Awsome walk thrus in this thread for getting the eGPU up and running. Currently I got a ThunderTek TB1 plugged into a 760 GTX into my early 2013 mbp (dedicated graphics). All wrapped up in a mini ATX case (how did this spontaneously get a link, and the link is wrong anyways). It's gorgeous. * Can anyone suggest a good mac graphics benchmarking program I could use to compare to other people's set up? * (since windows refuses to work for me right now) - only thing of note so far was that I got a strange freeze on wake up this evening, I use my computer regularly for work or classes, and put it to sleep regularly by closing the lid (parallels programs running too) and have not had any problems on wake up until today (day after doing the plist modifications described in this section). Have other people experience problems on their mbp after running an eGPU on their mac? -- edit. Further instabilities experienced. After closing the lid to put the computer to sleep, it is un responsive (even the apple logo will not light up when the computer is opened). Only way to get the computer to respond is the ”hold power button and nope you don't loose too much data” option. -- thank god for time machine I guess --

Have yet to get the windows 8.1 up and running, but the mac side was surprisingly easy to get set up. thanks goes to floppah and his post http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu-projects/6088-native-thunderbolt-egpu-osx-win8-1-a.html Now running the 760 GTX card: still working on the windows thunderbolt problem, but for now I might as well see how good world of tanks runs in parallels 10. Ran a 3d mark text in parallels, and while my younger brother (with similar/comparable hardware) got a 24,000, parallels got a measly 8,700. if there was a way to pass the thunderbolt directly to parallels so windows drives the gpu directly (as opposed to thru the mac), that could be cool. Unfortunately according to the parallels website, only thunderbolt "storage" devices can be passed directly to the guest OS. windows will not recognize the the gpu as having been plugged in, and restarting the system gets it hung up on the choosing start up disk screen (seems to freeze as soon as windows OS is selected) edit: still gets stuck if I open boot camp control panel and choose restart in bootcamp (ie i don't hold alt on boot up) anyone know how to get past this. From all the posts I've read, windows 8.1 with bootcamp 5.1 installed is supposed to be almost plug and play

After multiple re installs of windows 8.1 using both a usb stick and a DVD, it seems that windows 8.1 is simply refusing to recognize the thunderbolt at all. Has anyone else had trouble using thunderbolt peripherals (drives or such) to their 8.1 BC install? The default bootcamp drivers installed are the 5.1.5621 listed in the link above. At least no more error tones from my electronics oh, and no smoke or burning smells Installed the NVIDIA drivers for the card off the NVIDIA website. (After powering up and plugging it in) Edit: I think I got the main problem tracked down. I don't think its a problem related to the eGPU, but rather its the fact that for whatever reason, the newly installed Windows 8.1 on bootcamp will not recognize ANY Thunderbolt connections. Any ideas why Windows 8.1 with Bootcamp 5.x drivers installed isn't recognizing the TB on my rMBP? Edit: technically not any, if the computer is rebooted with the TB drive connected, it will recognize on start up, but then will not release the TB Drive unless i shut down (and ejecting the "Thunderbolt" connection crashes the computer, go figure). my main question for this post: could the the fact that the tester card I'm using is a GeForce 8800 GTX (ie from 2006/2007 and runs on pcie 1.1) be the problem, and is no longer supported? -- the idea was that if that worked, I'd put my 760 in. - installed the bootcamp 5.x (using the prescribed process) powered stuff up, plugged it in, video card makes plenty of noise (gpu fan), but nothing is showing up in the device manager. Attempting a restart with the gpu plugged in gets me the grey screen (mac boot up) and I don't get to the boot drive choice screen. (Waiting a few minutes...) - held power button and restarted again, holding alt, get to the boot drive choices. Now it's hanging there (made progress maybe?) (waiting a few minutes...) - so powered the machine off again, and unplugged the TB to gpu turned off the power bar going to the egpu stuff turned on mac, get to boot drive screen, selected the windows partition and started it, and then turned on the gpu and plugged TB back in stuff (noisy gpu) spooling up, thundertek lights back on. Under device manager, monitors ( as shown I the linked document above) I do not see the second PhP monitor, at this point I'll just give it a few minutes (as it does not seem to be harming anything) and see if the computer is just being slow I have clicked the scan for new hardware button a few times now, if that makes any difference in this case should note that shutting down (not restarting) the windows boot camp seems to power down the gpu rig.

Would this be the appropriate place to post help questions? I'm attempting a set up almost identical to what is posted in this and a few other articles (using the thundertek board to drive an egpu) upon on power up I'm immediately hearing a tone, which I think is coming from the thundertek board. At this point I'm powering off the system. I've got a 650 W psu an old tester card (GeForce 8800 GTX) powered pcie cable rMBP 15" early 2013 model (with dedicated graphics) windows 8.1 thunderbolt cable plugged in every thing is plugged into the same power bar, which I flipped off when I heard the tone. Thanks for the help