It was another long time that I have not updated my blog.
Many things happened during this time. Basically, I had to move my blog to GitHub because of the instability of the original web servers I used before.
Also, I changed the platform of the blog from WordPress to hexo based on Node.js due to several reasons: no database support on GitHub, high resource usage of WordPress, etc. Since this is just a blog without any dynamic contents within articles, it is really unnecessary to use a dynamic platform like PHP+MySQL. Hexo can produce static HTML files that have same quality as WordPress’s. Plus, the comment feature built in WordPress is not needed, either.
Back to the main topic. This is also something happened during this time.
I bought a new MacBook Pro Retina 15’, since my old MacBook Pro 17’ was getting old. This new machine has 16GB memory and 1TB SSD, which is much, much faster than any of my old machines (even desktops). The larger memory also enables me to open multiple virtual machines at the same time, which proves to be extremely useful in later work.
However, it was a little bit annoying when I tried to install Windows on it (Don’t ask me why I do this – everything has a reason :)). Following the normal Boot Camp procedures, I always got an error from Windows Setup after copying all the Windows files to hard disk:
Windows could not update the computer’s boot configuration. Installation cannot proceed.
Once I got caught this error, no matter how many times I restarted and tried again, this error never let go.
I searched on the Internet, trying to find a solution to this. One is that when computer restarts after Boot Camp finished the partitions, use Option-Alt to go back to Mac OS X and use Disk Utility to re-create the Windows partition, then restarts again to install. I tried this, but later on I found that in this case, Windows will boot in MBR (legacy BIOS) mode, not UEFI mode. Even though nothing is obviously wrong, I am not quite satisfied because this is not a standard Boot Camp way for Windows installation.
After I continued digging in, I finally found the correct way to do this:
- Prepare Windows installation USB flash drive
- Shut down the Mac completely
- Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command (⌘), Option, P, and R
- Turn on the Mac, then press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys immediately after you hear the startup sound
- Hold these keys until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for a second time
- Release the keys. Let the Mac boot up into Mac OS X
- Open Boot Camp and follow the normal procedures
An important thing is, do not skip any steps. All steps must be followed strictly. If for some reason, the error still came up, redo the above steps from #2. If a redo is necessary, always redo from #2. Redo failed steps only will not solve the problem.
Using this way, Windows will boot up in UEFI mode. This applies to all versions of Windows that support UEFI boot mode, including Windows 8/8.1/10.
P.S.
There is a bug in this Mac’s boot code. If the Mac started Windows from Mac OS X’s Startup Disk control panel, the Intel CPU’s virtualization feature (VT-x) will be enabled. However, once Windows restarts itself, the virtualization feature (sometimes) will be automatically disabled. If such thing happened, in Windows Task Manager, it will show as
- Virtualization: Disabled
- Hyper-V Support: Enabled
The reason of this is so far unknown to me. But according to my experience so far, I did not have any issues in using VMware Workstation or other virtualization software. The issues from High-DPI are much more than this.