Retina 5K - AMD Boot Camp Driver failure

I would like to begin a discussion of the Boot Camp Drivers for the AMD video card in the stock Retina 5K iMac. There is a thread that demonstrates what appears to be a successful install of the drivers, and a thread that demonstrates a non-successful install.

A non-sucessful install looks like this:

The drivers tab indicates that driver version 14.200.1002.1002 is installed.

This is the stock Boot camp driver install. The latest beta Catalyst drivers from the AMD website will also return the same results.

I have had conversations with Apple support and it seems there is no official support for Boot Camp after install. They have no useful information beyond blaming Microsoft and/or AMD and acknowledging that there are threads at Apple communities that confirm people are having this issue.

For those of you with the Retina 5K, can you get the AMD Boot Camp drivers to function? If so, what did you do to make it work?

Can you list your specific hardware load out?

I am not concerned about true 5K support in Windows, that is not the issue at this point. The issue is that the AMD Boot Camp drivers will install, but Windows refuses to load them and returns a 'code 43' error.

Retina 5K - 3.5GHz i5, 8GB ram, AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2048MB

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Nov 16, 2014 11:07 AM

217 replies

Dec 31, 2014 7:06 PM in response to Novelty Condom

Solved! Here is the solution.

If you are installing Boot Camp Windows 8, 8.1, 10 (technical preview) and in the Windows Device Manager you see an error (exclamation mark) next to the Display Adapter entry, and on the properties page a "Code 43" error is displayed, then the drivers provided by Boot Camp have failed to load and Windows is using a basic display driver that will not take advantage of the 3D acceleration capabilities of the video hardware. Games, CAD applications, and etc. will not function as expected. There are no drivers available as of this date that remedy this issue. I've gone so far as to recompile driver packages and was never able to get past the Code 43 error.

The fix:

Forget Windows 8, 8.1, 10. the Code 43 issue is not fixable using these version of Windows.

Install Windows 7. That's it. Problem solved. Code 43 did not appear on the first install of Windows 7, but was trivial to replicate when installing any other version.

Installing Windows 7 was more complicated than I counted on. The basic Windows 7 install disc does not include bluetooth or USB 3.0 drivers. Boot Camp attempts to solve this by slip-streaming those drivers into the install.

If you have any other USB device plugged into the iMac this slip-stream will fail. Only your Windows USB and Boot Camp support USB should be plugged in. In my case I have a USB mouse I prefer over the stock Apple mouse. This prevented the Bluetooth drivers from activating and I was stuck at the language selection screen of the install with no mouse or keyboard. Plugging in a wired mouse and keyboard did not solve this issue. Neither did disabling bluetooth in OSX and trying the install again.

I also encountered an issue where after creating the Boot Camp partition, when the computer would reboot to start the Windows install, I would get a "No bootable device" error and a full computer stop. If I held down Option when rebooting I could select the Windows USB as the boot device and the install would start, but the needed drivers would not load. The only way I found to fix this was to reboot into OSX, open Boot Camp Assistant and remove the Windows partition, exit Boot Camp Assistant, open BCA again and recreate the partition, then reboot. Then do this over and over and over (and over, and over, and over again) until it didn't give me this error. It took 8 tries for the computer to find the Windows boot drive on its own. Option, then selecting the Windows USB never worked. /usr/sbin/bless did not work. I had to delete the partition and recreate it with BCA, then reboot.

There are 192 updates to Windows 7 SP1 with a stock installation. It took 2.5 hours to complete the updates. I've tested the video hardware before and after the updates and can confirm the Code 43 error is not evident in my Windows 7 Boot Camp install, and 3D hardware and drivers are functioning as expected.

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 31, 2014 8:08 PM in response to Novelty Condom

Novelty Condom wrote:

Only your Windows USB and Boot Camp support USB should be plugged in.

Are you using two USB devices, one each for Windows and BC drivers? You should need only one which has both, built by the BCA.

I also encountered an issue where after creating the Boot Camp partition, when the computer would reboot to start the Windows install, I would get a "No bootable device" error and a full computer stop. If I held down Option when rebooting I could select the Windows USB as the boot device and the install would start, but the needed drivers would not load. The only way I found to fix this was to reboot into OSX, open Boot Camp Assistant and remove the Windows partition, exit Boot Camp Assistant, open BCA again and recreate the partition, then reboot. Then do this over and over and over (and over, and over, and over again) until it didn't give me this error. It took 8 tries for the computer to find the Windows boot drive on its own. Option, then selecting the Windows USB never worked. /usr/sbin/bless did not work. I had to delete the partition and recreate it with BCA, then reboot.

This is seen when using a USB3 device with Windows 7, but not a USB2 flash stick/disk. Can you check what you were using? Do you have a Fusion drive? Fusion drive partitioning by BCA is prone to failure and does not complete properly despite many attempts.

There are 192 updates to Windows 7 SP1 with a stock installation. It took 2.5 hours to complete the updates. I've tested the video hardware before and after the updates and can confirm the Code 43 error is not evident in my Windows 7 Boot Camp install, and 3D hardware and drivers are functioning as expected.

Are you using the BC-provided drivers for the GPUs or the AMD Omega drivers (which are only WHQL-certified) on W7? I assume you are using the BC drivers.

civelek

Level 1

8 points

Dec 31, 2014 8:40 PM in response to Loner T

hi.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/bootcamp

12/16/2014 and version 14.301 for imac.

working.

Dec 31, 2014 9:06 PM in response to Loner T

Are you using two USB devices, one each for Windows and BC drivers ? You should need only one which has both, built by the BCA.

This is seen when using a USB3 device with Windows 7, but not a USB2 flash stick/disk. Can you check what you were using? Do you have a Fusion drive? Fusion drive partitioning by BCA is prone to failure and does not complete properly despite many attempts.

Are you using the BC-provided drivers for the GPUs or the AMD Omega drivers (which are only WHQL-certified) on W7? I assume you are using the BC drivers.

I use 2 Usb devices so I can yank the BCA support stuff before it gets installed for testing purposes.

I started with USB 3.0 sticks. I was unable to get the Win 7 install to work with these. Had to downgrade to USB 2.0 sticks. I have a Fusion drive 1TB.

I'm using the stock BCA drivers as downloaded by BCA on 12/31/2014. Not sure of driver version. I haven't looked yet.

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 31, 2014 9:22 PM in response to Novelty Condom

Novelty Condom wrote:

I use 2 Usb devices so I can yank the BCA support stuff before it gets installed for testing purposes.

I started with USB 3.0 sticks. I was unable to get the Win 7 install to work with these. Had to downgrade to USB 2.0 sticks.

One option is to use the "Download drivers..." checkbox and build a USB with just BC drivers. Use a second USB to build the ISO+BC drivers, and have only one device during installation.

I have a Fusion drive 1TB.

A fusion drive (and 3TB ones are more problematic than the 1TB ones) can be left in a 'partial' state. Did you preserve any of the disk layouts from the diskutil and GPT commands? It is unlikely, but it would be wonderful, if you did.

I'm using the stock BCA drivers as downloaded by BCA on 12/31/2014. Not sure of driver version. I haven't looked yet.

If you plan to play with non-BC GPU drivers, can I request good notes for documenting the configurations and drivers tested?

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Dec 31, 2014 9:24 PM in response to civelek

civelek wrote:

hi.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/bootcamp

12/16/2014 and version 14.301 for imac.

working.

This supports my contention that AMD (and not Apple) are responsible for providing drivers. 😉

phatben

Level 1

8 points

May 6, 2015 6:57 PM in response to Novelty Condom

Sorry to necro this thread but I am having the exact problem as OP and it is starting to become extremely frustrating

I purchased and installed a new copy of windows 8.1 pro on an iMac Retina 5k but I cannot get my graphics driver (AMD Radeon R9 M290X) to work.

Downloading and installing the latest AMD drivers for bootcamp (version 14.301) does not help either.

Catalyst Control Center cannot be stated either because there is no settings that can be configured.

I have reinstalled a couple of times but I still return with the same problem.

I would like to know if the only way to get windows running with these graphics is to install win 7?

Have there been any success with getting the driver to work on win 8.1 and if so, how?

R2TW

Level 1

0 points

May 11, 2015 4:12 PM in response to phatben

Plus 1 I have exactly the same issue have installed everything from Windows 10 down with no way around this driver failure just watching http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/bootcamp for update please let me know if anyone finds a solution as i don't have windows 7 key and am reluctant to buy a 6 year old operating system if i don't need to

ccc1325

Level 1

0 points

May 20, 2015 2:35 AM in response to R2TW

I'm in the same situation. I hope this problem will be fixed soon. :-(

Jun 1, 2015 5:05 PM in response to Novelty Condom

Note for clarity: my goal here was to get past the exclamation point and "code 43" error. The fact that I ultimately got to install the latest beta drivers is just gravy.

I've just managed to solve this problem (for myself at least) after a lot of frustration. I'm now running with the latest AMD beta drivers under the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview.

I went through a lot of trial and error to get it up and running, so this could very well fail as a recipe, but the broad strokes are correct.

0) You may want to begin by uninstalling the Catalyst display driver provided by Boot Camp.

1) Pick up the latest AMD beta driver here: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx

2) Go to the Device Manager. Under Windows 10 this is Start > Settings > Devices > (bottom of page) Device Manager.

3) Right-click the display adapter (you'll recognize it from the yellow exclamation point) and choose "Uninstall." In the following box, check the box to uninstall the software before clicking OK.

4) Run the AMD beta installer. It will unpack everything to a temporary directory (which you should note) and then perform a quick installation that will not, unfortunately, include the display driver.

5) Back in the device manager, your display adapter should be back as the generic display driver. Right-click it and choose "Update the display driver..."

6) Choose "Browse to the display driver" and choose the installation directory you noted earlier.

7) Let it run for a while. At some point you will have to confirm that you want to install the new driver.

That should do it. If any of these steps seems to go much quicker than you would have expected, it's possible there was something else that needed to be uninstalled.

Good luck!

phatben

Level 1

8 points

Jun 2, 2015 3:49 AM in response to Neurosion

Hi Neurosion,

thanks for posting the solution above

unfortunately i am unable to replicate this fix on windows 8.1

at step 5, the display adapter does not show up as generic display driver but as "AMD RADEON R9 M290X" (with the yellow exclamation mark) from step 3 instead. Trying to update the display driver brings me to a tab which states that the best driver software is already installed.

I tried a fresh reinstall without installing any bootcamp drivers but the problem still persists 😟

Still looking for any advice on how to get this graphics driver working. Am seriously considering bringing this entire piece to the Apple Shop.

Jun 2, 2015 5:21 AM in response to phatben

Hi Phatben,

It sounds like something didn't get fully uninstalled. Did you perform the full uninstall of Catalyst drivers from step 0? You would need to run the "Setup" program from BootCamp/Drivers/ATI on your original boot disk. It's also possible that the Windos 8.1 version of the dialog for the "Uninstall..." step in the Device Manager doesn't have the "Uninstall the software" checkbox; I don't have it handy to check.

You might want to do a preflight check. After step 3, in the Device Manager, right-click the top-level node and chose "Scan for hardware changes..." The system will find and attempt to load a driver for the display adapter. If it comes up as a Radeon again then something is still installed somewhere.

I also wasn't specific enough about which beta driver to download (and the forum apparently puts a cap on how long you're allowed to make edits). Make sure you grab the 64-bit driver for Windows 8.1. The folder you should end up with (being the folder you should select in step 6) is AMD-Catalyst-15.5Beta-64Bit-Win8.1-May27.

Running the installer (step 4) should be relatively quick. The messages that go by will be "Detecting system configuration" followed rapidly by "Detecting basic system" or something along those lines. In step 6 make sure you check the "search sub-folders" checkbox. It can take a little while for Windows to find the correct driver. I had a LOT of display artifacts during this process, but that might have been a Windows 10 issue more than anything. At the end of the process the display driver should show up as "AMD Radeon R9 200 Series."

The whole thing was very frustrating; I also considered returning the computer. I would have given up entirely if I hadn't found one obscure thread in Reddit where someone who had this exact same problem reported success but couldn't remember what he did. The one thing I want to point out is that I never once reinstalled Windows; running uninstallers for the BootCamp-installed software was sufficient.

Good luck!

ccc1325

Level 1

0 points

Jun 2, 2015 1:04 PM in response to Neurosion

Hello Neurosion,

Thank you for your help. In my case unfortunately this procedure did work (I'm running Win8.1). I still have the error code 43.

Any idea?

Jun 2, 2015 1:12 PM in response to ccc1325

Unfortunately, that's all I've got. There may very well have been another experiment I tried that primed the pump for this to work, but I wouldn't be able to guess what that may have been. When I've got some time I may try to WinClone my working configuration and try again from scratch, but even if that works I'd only be able to guarantee that it worked for a Windows 10 TP configuration, since I don't have any Windows 8 licenses lying around.

phatben

Level 1

8 points

Jun 9, 2015 10:47 PM in response to Neurosion

Hi Neurosion,

Thanks for the tip. I realised that windows was automatically updating the driver whenever it is detected, therefore was not getting a generic display driver on the device manager. I managed to resolve this problem by turning off automatic updates on devices which worked!

However when updating the generic display driver at step 6, i still get the code 43 error from the installation, similar to the picture ccc1325 posted

I guess it may be a hardware issue, i may bring it down to the store this week

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Retina 5K - AMD Boot Camp Driver failure