I've had Windows 8 RTM installed on my Macbook Pro (8,1) for a number of weeks now and I haven't had any sound (Device Manager sees a High Definition Audio Device, but it cannot start) on the laptop. In addition to this my Thunderbolt display also did not work - the sound and USB ports did work, but the display did not come on during boot.
I read on-line that there were some issues related to EFI and Windows 8 x64 so I reinstalled MacOS X, then installed Windows 8 using the boot camp assistant. I then installed the bootcamp drivers in Windows.
After this I booted into MacOS and installed rEFIt and ran the "/efi/refit/enable-always.sh" script. Then on reboot I chose Windows from the rEFIt boot menu, and the Windows logo appeared on my Thunderbolt display and sound worked correctly.
From MACOS you can also edit /efi/refit/refitrefit.conf to set the default OS and timeout period if you want to boot into Windows most of the time and not have to push enter.
I'm happy now, but I'll suppose I'll have to wait for an EFI update or new drivers before I can remove reFIt and have Windows 8 running fine.
Bonus tip: I've also purchased Start8 ($4.95) to add the Windows start button back. In addition, Start8 also boots your directly to the desktop rather than the "Metro" interface.
I like what Microsoft is trying to do with the "Metro" interface, but it just doesn't work for me and how I use my computer. If I just wrote some emails and could live on an IPad - Metro would most likely be fine.
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| Windows 8 with Start8 installed |
So is this using EFI? I have the same issue with audio & thunderbolt.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that with rEfit you end up with an emulated bios rather than the EFI bios. It works or me - USB on the Thunderbolt monitor has been a bit intermittent, I'm still trying to pinpoint what is making it work or not...
ReplyDeleteIn that case what role is rEFIt playing? Windows 8 installs and runs perfectly using boot camp without any special attention. My issue is I have an SSD, and there is no AHCI support using boot camp which is severely affecting performance.
DeleteThe performance increase is incredible with EFI, it boots up in about 5 seconds flat. If only it wasn't for this damn audio & thunderbolt issue. There'a an AHCI hack for boot camp but then it loses the ability to sleep. I guess that's probably the best option at this stage until there's a fix.
For my laptop both onboard sound and Thunderbolt Display did not work until I booted via rEfit. Windows installed fine etc, but there were broken high definition audio drivers and display the windows logo never appeared during boot on the external display and could not be enabled. I might reinstall once (if?) apple fixes this with an update but my current setup boots pretty fast even with ReFit...
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