Windows 8 EFI Audio pre-boot patch?
An EFI boot manager utility
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Hi,
I'm wondering if anyone has had any success in a solution to run Windows 8.1 in EFI mode with support for the Cirrus Audio controller.
I have a total of 7 Macintosh machines ranging from 2009 to 2014 models, and i have not had the Audio controller working in Windows 8 EFI mode on any of them.
The reason i envision a rEFInd based solution is because other bootloaders are either highly complex and not as versatile - Or - they are tailored to other requirements, such as Clover / hackintosh's, etc.
Before one might suggest "Just use Windows in BIOS mode ... and deal with it.. ", i will say that Hybrid MBR's and pure MBR's, while attractive at first, have led me down a long and windy learning curve that ends up straight back pure GPT. Not to mention, that EFI mode consistently works best (for me anyway). Many of the issues others complain about i have not experienced on any of my devices ever, on all of my macintosh machines my Windows-to-go install works with full power management, brightness hotkeys, both Intel HD and AMD/ATI video cards present, fastboot, etc. Just not the audio. The reason why such functionality would be ideal;
I have a general use portable SSD device, with USB and Thunderbolt connections, that is formatted to GPT and serves the majority of my diagnostic, recovery, and portability needs. Many admins and devs have numerous toolkits and myself included, accept that there is never one complete 'AIO' disk. However, this has met most tasks of recent..This disk plugs into any UEFI based PC (so far has worked on every PC i've tried, including laptops such as Dell, Toshiba, ASUS), and Macs (of which i've tried on iMacs and Macbooks from 2009 to date), and on each machine this disk seamlessly boots any of the following loaders via rEFInd;
I think for this disk to work (not to mention the internal-like performance when it's run on Thunderbolt or USB 3.0) on so many machines without bluescreening, or requiring patches, partition mods, or BCDedits every time it changes machines, is a true testament to rEFInds quality for a start, and overall i suspect this is the type of scenario that represents what UEFI / GPT should look like.
Amidst a Truecrypt storage partition, this has been such a good recovery and deployment tool, with the exception of the annoyance of the big exclaimation mark in device manager on the dang "HD Audio Controller - This device cannot start (10)" in Windows 8.
Now there has been literally hundreds of discussions and conversations on this topic, and yet only few have really identified where the issue is centred, and these few have not found solutions. I'm not into "blaming" Windows for not modifying the registers itself, nor blaming Apple for not having a 'proper' UEFI implementation.. to me this seems perfectly do-able, albeit an unforeseeable tragic oversight in 'default' nvram variables, for lack of a better analogy. The simple fact is the audio hardware works when booted in Mac, so it can work under EFI. It works perfectly when booted into Legacy mode, but running Windows 8.1 in BIOS mode solves one problem, and creates about 20 others, especially when aiming for a portable install.
In Legacy mode, these sound devices appear;
And in EFI Mode, only this one;
Many say the display hardware and the "VGA" enable register are at the root, but i have spent many a days changing these using PCI xx xx xx -i -b and then mm xxxxxx3E 8 -PCI or mm xxxxxx04 7 -PCI , combined with a few other variants, and the most i've ever been able to achieve, (once solving the BSODs they create), is a few extra conflicting devices in device manager.
In some linux forums they claim to have fixed the same "Cirrus Audio" issue using various grub configurations that pass options straight to modified kernels, etc.
Rod, i hope this does not appear as an attempt to discuss an irrelevant topic on your development board. I believe Windows 8.1 and 10, work best in EFI mode, on Macs and PC's alike, and that having a reliable and portable way to boot into these two largely implemented Operating Systems is an essential tool for many administrators. It's my opinion that this functionality (or automated hack / correction) is best suited to rEFInd and would be useful to many, as i have seen many developers and [even windows] admins start to work on Macintosh machines for reasons unrelated to this discussion.
I hope someone can offer some insight to this.
Thanks
I have no personal experience with that specific hardware, so I can't offer a ready-made solution. My suggestion, though, is to look for alternate or updated drivers for the hardware in question. FWIW, when I Googled the device name ("CS4206B") and some keywords, one of the hits I found was this:
http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mac/83868-solved-imac-bootcamped-win-7-cirrus-logic-audio-not-working-due-hd-audio-driver.html
That's about Windows 7 in a Boot Camp install, but it caught my eye because it's similar symptoms to what you're describing and it's marked as "solved."
Best of luck getting this to work!
This issue is like many others and has to do with driver behavior. I'm fairly certain my issue exists before Windows boot.
I'll post back if i do get this to work one way or another.
Thanks
Drivers normally load after the OS takes control of the computer, so if the problem is "with [Windows] driver behavior," then it cannot exist before Windows boots. That said, there are EFI drivers. I don't know if the Mac's firmware includes a driver for the audio device -- the startup "bong" sound suggests that it may, but that sound might be generated in some other way. In any event, OS X can handle the computer's audio device, so Windows should be able to do the same. This may require a change to the Windows audio driver, hence my suggestion that you look at alternative Windows drivers for that device.
Hi, I find Clover support Audio device prop. Inject. I wonder whether we can use this to solve it ?
https://clover-wiki.zetam.org/Configuration/Devices#devices_audio_audio-inject