[Solved] automate-eGPU EFI - eGPU boot manager for macOS and Windows  

@emanuelediba yea, nando confirmed that last night. Trying to reinstall windows in UEFI mode. For some reason the windows installation kept giving an error halfway through last night. I tried re downloading the iso image and will try again tonight or tomorrow and hope it works this time.

Did you convert the hybrid mbr to regular guid partion map?

This is something I had to do when switching to uefi mode on the 13" 2012 MacBook pro. I used gdisk in macos to do the partion map change

@nu_ninja No. I wiped out my existing bootcamp partition to return the Hard Drive to a single partition using the Boot Camp Assistant. I then created the Windows install USB using the Bootcamp Assistant. Then I used Disk Utility to format the hard drive and add an HFS+ partition. I rebooted off the USB, and in the windows setup instructions I deleted the HFS+ partition and then created a new partition with the unallocated space to install onto. It does the initial install ok, but then when it restarts and continues the installation it runs into an error and then gets caught in a restart loop.

When I next try I'm going to do three things differently:
1) disable the purge_nvda before installing in case the mux setting is causing any problem
2) use unetbootin to create the USB install rather than the bootcamp assistant
3) make sure all peripherals (including an external hard drive) are disconnected during the windows install

Hopefully this will work. Any other suggestions?

That might be fine, I would just check using gdisk to make sure you have a "protective" mbr and not a "hybrid" mbr

Posted by: nu_ninja

That might be fine, I would just check using gdisk to make sure you have a "protective" mbr and not a "hybrid" mbr

Thanks - will do

Took a bit more work than I expected, but I managed to get Windows installed in UEFI Mode. Not sure whether it was the disabling of purge-nvda, using UNetbootin, re-downloading ISO (I had to split parts of the ISO also because one of the files was too big for FAT32), or disconnecting peripherals/other hard drives that did it, but it works now. I also built a DSDT.aml file and put it in the automate-EFI USB stick and it works great.

I paid a lot of attention to the following sites:

• https://fgimian.github.io/blog/2016/03/12/installing-windows-10-on-a-mac-without-bootcamp/
• https://twocanoes.com/using-larger-windows-10-isos-with-boot-camp-assistant/
• https://egpu.io/forums/builds/mid-2012-15-macbook-pro-non-retina-rx58010gbps-tb1-gigabyte-gaming-box-via-tb3-to-tb1-adapter-macos10-13-4-win10-clarketus/
• https://egpu.io/forums/builds/2011-early-15-macbook-pro-hd6750m-gtx1050ti10gbps-tb1-sonnet-egfx-breakaway-box-350w-via-tb3-to-tb2-adapter-macos-win10-uefi-fsp/
• https://egpu.io/forums/pc-setup/fix-dsdt-override-to-correct-error-12/

The steps I followed were slightly different then shown in those guides though. In particular, I couldn't disable the intel drivers from installing/updating. It hasn't seemed to cause any problems for me though. I also haven't received any error 12 problems after doing the DSDT override, and therefore didn't need to do any PCI-to-PCI bridge disabling. 

Only two challenges at the moment:

• Seems like I have to boot twice in Windows to get the screens to load. The first time after the spinning load-up I just get black screens on both internal and external monitors. I have a cursor that I can move around, but nothing else. If I hard shut down with the power button and then turn back on it works the second time
• I seem to be tripping the PSU a bit more in Windows when benchmarking than I did in Mac OS. In one case I monitored the power draw and it never got above 180 W, which should be in easy range for the 400W PSU in the Akitio Node. Maybe I'll have to undervolt it a bit

I'll try running some of the same benchmarks in Windows to see the results.

@goalque @mac_editor @itsage Question to experts. The "boot efi black screen" problem was mentioned couple of times here (it wasn't easy to read through all 19 pages) but with no proposed solution, still I hope you can possibly recommend something here. In some case I cannot reach the very first screen of this automate-EGPU EFI (screen that asks you to push "q") on my Mac Mini 2014, instead I can only see blank black screen (tried to wait for 10min). In the same time with the very same USB stick I can see that screen when trying to boot on my MacBook Pro late 2013. I tried enabling debug.log but I can see no log created, apparently it cannot reach any meaningful stage. What can possibly be wrong with my Mac Mini? Maybe there is a way to get some details on why it fails?

Some details:
- both macs have Bootcamp (probably does not matter yet, but Windows 10 EFI)
- both running same 10.14.4 on APFS
- used mac_editor's script to format USB stick with AMD settings
- here is how folder structure looks like https://imgur.com/a/udNPUhH
- tried to load from both USB and small partition on main disk
- plist contents https://pastebin.com/6CAMP5xU
- SIP disabled
- no other workarounds applied
- never tried other bootloaders
- EGPU disconnected

PS: and actually my only goal is to solve "error 12" on Windows 10 but disabling/enabling PCI switches/roots does not seem to work for me. TESTSIGNING mode is not recommended and so far I wasn't able to make GPU to be allocated in "large memory" segment. All other ways to override DSDT.aml have warning that only sane way is to use automate-egpu efi.

Which partition is blessed as default boot volume? I never used a 2014 Mac mini with eGPU so I'm not sure if it's similar to the 2018 Mac mini regarding boot behavior. What I found most reliable is to hold OPTION at boot then select the EFI volume. I have also moved automate-eGPU EFI to a 24MB FAT partition on the internal drive. Give this a try a see if it helps.

@koskokos I had a 2014 Mac mini and its firmware was very sensitive to small changes in eGPU detection algorithm (which is far from perfect anyway). Unfortunately you can’t use this EFI on a 2014 Mac mini. I recall that Windows 10 should work without any hacks. Use Thunderbolt port closest to the USB ports.

Posted by: itsage

Which partition is blessed as default boot volume? I never used a 2014 Mac mini with eGPU so I'm not sure if it's similar to the 2018 Mac mini regarding boot behavior. What I found most reliable is to hold OPTION at boot then select the EFI volume. I have also moved automate-eGPU EFI to a 24MB FAT partition on the internal drive. Give this a try a see if it helps.

Thanks for the suggestion, at most recent attempt I'm using 200MB FAT partition instead of USB stick and APFS macOS partition set as startup one. Anyway it probably doesn't matter in light of @goalque last comment.