2015-03-16, 21:07
No.
However HD audio works in linux.
However HD audio works in linux.
2015-03-20, 03:49
How did you guys get Windows 8 to even fit on the Chromebox?
2015-03-20, 20:50
2015-03-20, 20:58
(2015-03-20, 20:50)Reb313 Wrote:(2015-03-20, 03:58)nickr Wrote: 16G is enough for windows 8.1.
I got it installed but I couldn't even install anything else or windows updates since it filled up the drive.
64-bit install? that's why. You can try doing a WIMBoot install, which keeps the majority of the Windows system files compressed. But at some point, you need to ask yourself why you're trying to install Windows on hardware which is unsupported / has limitations, and whether it's worth your time/effort.
2015-03-21, 01:01
All online sources say wimboot is efi only, so that's probably not possible you are somehow able to hack it yourself. You could always use ntlite to strip out all unneeded drivers/components. Then it should fit easily on 16gb with loads to spare. Post install, you can also run som utility to delete the windows cache etc.
2015-03-23, 15:41
Hi,
After many failed attempts, yesterday evening I managed to install Windows 8 on my dual-boot Asus Chromebox (Intel Celeron 2955U), running off a Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 USB 3.0 stick (32 GB), with working audio over HDMI. I have tested it both with my Sony TV and my Asus monitor with built-in speakers and I'm happy to report that audio works great (Youtube, MPC-HC x64 with high-bitrate x264 bluray mkv rips etc).
Please note : I'm not using the headphone jack / HDMI USB dongles etc, just the built-in HDMI port with a simple HDMI cable and audio is heard through my TV's built-in speakers / Monitor speaker.
In case people are interested, here's what worked for me - I installed a modified Windows 8 (not Windows 8.1) image off MSDN. These are the steps I took - in order to minimize USB loading delays in Windows I would advise using a relatively fast USB 3.0 stick :
1) Download en_windows_8_x64_dvd_915440.iso off MSDN, which is a Windows 8 64-bit image. Don't use a Windows 8.1 image, I've tried a few off MSDN and they never worked.
2) Download and extract all these drivers from the Gigabyte GB-BXCEH-2955 rev1.0 page ( http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product...x?pid=4860 - Download type: Driver - OS : Windows 8 64bit) to a single directory :
Audio driver 6.0.1.6959
Chipset Driver 9.4.0.1016
Intel HD Graphic driver 9.18.10.3220
It is necessary to fully extract each driver so that the .inf files are present, not just a single .exe file, ie. for the chipset driver you first need to run haswell_driver_chipset.exe then enter a command prompt, go to the directory infinst_autol.exe got extracted to and then run :
infinst_autol.exe -a -p c:\path_where_drivers_will_be_extracted_to
(extract all files to c:\path_where_drivers_will_be_extracted_to )
All extracted executable files should similarly be extracted to the same path, eg. c:\path_where_drivers_will_be_extracted_to
If in doubt regarding the command line switches for each downloaded driver exe, try running it with the -? switch
The LAN wired port is detected correctly by Windows but you will need to download and fully extract the appropriate WiFi driver (Atheros AR9285) from the following page : https://www.atheros.cz/atheros-wireless-...7&system=7 . I used the file win8-10.0.0.287-whql.zip for Windows 8 which works great with the built-in WiFi module.
Another driver which is not included (but probably not terribly necessary) is the Intel Serial IO GPIO Host Controller. You can download a version for Windows 8 x64 from this link : http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/publi...b-141146-1
3) Download and install DISM GUI v4 from https://dismgui.codeplex.com/releases/view/133331
DISM GUI will be used to modify the installation image off the MSDN iso we just downloaded, in order to include the required Chromebox drivers.
If we use the unmodified image installation will fail at some stage when booting from a USB stick (at least it did in my case, no matter how I prepared the USB stick).
4) Download and install RMPrepUSB v.2.1.728 from http://www.rmprepusb.com/documents/rmpre...a-versions ( I installed Install_RMPrepUSB_Full_v2.1.728.zip ).
Also, you need to have imagex.exe on your system by installing the appropriate version of Microsoft Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) for your version of Windows. I decided not to install WAIK and instead I followed the very good tutorial at http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/getwaiktools to get imagex.exe without downloading the full WAIK suite (took about a minute to download and very little hard drive space).
5) Mount en_windows_8_x64_dvd_915440.iso with the appropriate utility so that it appears as a DVD drive on My Computer (eg. use the free Slysoft Virtual CloneDrive utility : http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html ).
6) Create two empty directories for building the modified image, eg. C:\img_mount and C:\img_wim . Copy Install.wim from the mounted iso, located in the Sources subdirectory, to C:\img_wim and run DISM GUI.
7) Click on Chose WIM and select C:\img_wim\install.wim , click on Choose Folder and select c:\img_mount . Finally, click on Mount WIM.
8) After the mounting process finishes, click on the Drive Management tab and on the Choose Driver Folder button. Select the folder where you fully extracted all the drivers in. Make sure that both the Force Unsigned and Recurse options are ticked. Click on Add Drivers and wait until the process finishes.
9) Click on the Mount Control tab, click on Dismount WIM and answer Yes when asked to apply changes.
The modified image is ready and is stored in C:\img_wim
10) Now, insert a USB stick on your computer and run RMPrepUSB (I used a 32GB stick).
Make sure that the stick is correctly shown at the top of the screen, click on 'WinPEv2/WinPEv3/Vista/Win7 bootable [BOOTMGR] (CC4)', click on NTFS and 'Boot as HDD (C: 2PTNS)' and finally click '6 Prepare Drive' at the bottom.
11) After the process is finished, run a command prompt, go to the directory where you installed Imagex.exe (step 3) and run :
imagex.exe /Apply C:\img_wim\install.wim 1 g:
(where g: is the USB stick drive letter)
This will write the modified Windows installation image with the Chromebox drivers we just added to the USB stick. In my case, the process took about 40 minutes to completion.
12) In order to prepare your USB stick for booting Windows, within a command prompt run :
g:\windows\system32\bcdboot g:\windows /s g: /v
(where g: is the USB stick drive letter - you might need to first run
g:
cd \windows\system32
before running the above bcdboot command )
When this process is complete, you can close the command prompt and safely eject the USB stick.
Now insert your USB stick to your chromebox, turn it on, at the white debug screen press Ctrl-L and when prompted press the Escape key. Select your USB stick from the list of drives and Windows should boot. After all devices are detected and a few reboots, Windows will prompt you for a valid product key and the operating system will install/work correctly from your USB stick.
I would advise that you completely disable automatic updates (or selectively update your system). If the update to Windows 8.1 is installed, the stick might stop booting on your Chromebox.
Many thanks to the amazing Kodi community, the people that posted in this thread (DocG / gkingsmill / Matt Devo / etc) and to the authors of the above mentioned web pages / tools / tutorials who made all of this possible!
--------------------------------------------
Update 28/3/2015 :
Some people may find this useful : when I'd like to experiment with my installation of Windows on Chromebox, I make a sector-by-sector image of my USB stick beforehand to my computer's hard drive using RMPrepUSB. Either reading from or writing to the entirety of my Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate USB 3.0 stick (32 GB) takes just 8 minutes, compared to the 45 minutes required by imagex.exe .
In order to store a full image of a USB stick to your computer :
1) have your USB stick attached to your computer and run RMPrepUSB
2) click on the Drive->File icon and select the path and filename of your new image file
3) when prompted for drive sector start position, length, file start byte position, leave the default values and click ok
4) finally, when prompted by a pop-up window to verify all specified options, click OK in order to start the process
In order to restore a stored image of a USB stick from your hard drive :
1) have your USB stick attached to your computer and run RMPrepUSB
2) click on the File -> Drive icon and select the image file to be restored
3) when prompted for file start byte, drive start sector position and length, leave the default values and click ok
4) finally, when prompted by a pop-up window to verify all specified options, click OK in order to start the process
--------------------------------------------
Update 30/3/2015 :
In order to enable Windows Store and download eg. a version of Netflix supporting 1080p / Dolby Digital playback, please check this article (many thanks to FredFF for this info) :
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hyperyash/archiv...hines.aspx
Also, if your system's Device Manager panel has a yellow exclamation point post-installation, you might need to install the Intel Management Engine driver from the above-mentioned Gigabyte site. This driver might be unnecessary depending on the firmware used. Also, it should not be installed on HP Chromeboxes since it can cause crashes / boot failures - thanks to all people that reported this.
After many failed attempts, yesterday evening I managed to install Windows 8 on my dual-boot Asus Chromebox (Intel Celeron 2955U), running off a Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 USB 3.0 stick (32 GB), with working audio over HDMI. I have tested it both with my Sony TV and my Asus monitor with built-in speakers and I'm happy to report that audio works great (Youtube, MPC-HC x64 with high-bitrate x264 bluray mkv rips etc).
Please note : I'm not using the headphone jack / HDMI USB dongles etc, just the built-in HDMI port with a simple HDMI cable and audio is heard through my TV's built-in speakers / Monitor speaker.
In case people are interested, here's what worked for me - I installed a modified Windows 8 (not Windows 8.1) image off MSDN. These are the steps I took - in order to minimize USB loading delays in Windows I would advise using a relatively fast USB 3.0 stick :
1) Download en_windows_8_x64_dvd_915440.iso off MSDN, which is a Windows 8 64-bit image. Don't use a Windows 8.1 image, I've tried a few off MSDN and they never worked.
2) Download and extract all these drivers from the Gigabyte GB-BXCEH-2955 rev1.0 page ( http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product...x?pid=4860 - Download type: Driver - OS : Windows 8 64bit) to a single directory :
Audio driver 6.0.1.6959
Chipset Driver 9.4.0.1016
Intel HD Graphic driver 9.18.10.3220
It is necessary to fully extract each driver so that the .inf files are present, not just a single .exe file, ie. for the chipset driver you first need to run haswell_driver_chipset.exe then enter a command prompt, go to the directory infinst_autol.exe got extracted to and then run :
infinst_autol.exe -a -p c:\path_where_drivers_will_be_extracted_to
(extract all files to c:\path_where_drivers_will_be_extracted_to )
All extracted executable files should similarly be extracted to the same path, eg. c:\path_where_drivers_will_be_extracted_to
If in doubt regarding the command line switches for each downloaded driver exe, try running it with the -? switch
The LAN wired port is detected correctly by Windows but you will need to download and fully extract the appropriate WiFi driver (Atheros AR9285) from the following page : https://www.atheros.cz/atheros-wireless-...7&system=7 . I used the file win8-10.0.0.287-whql.zip for Windows 8 which works great with the built-in WiFi module.
Another driver which is not included (but probably not terribly necessary) is the Intel Serial IO GPIO Host Controller. You can download a version for Windows 8 x64 from this link : http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/publi...b-141146-1
3) Download and install DISM GUI v4 from https://dismgui.codeplex.com/releases/view/133331
DISM GUI will be used to modify the installation image off the MSDN iso we just downloaded, in order to include the required Chromebox drivers.
If we use the unmodified image installation will fail at some stage when booting from a USB stick (at least it did in my case, no matter how I prepared the USB stick).
4) Download and install RMPrepUSB v.2.1.728 from http://www.rmprepusb.com/documents/rmpre...a-versions ( I installed Install_RMPrepUSB_Full_v2.1.728.zip ).
Also, you need to have imagex.exe on your system by installing the appropriate version of Microsoft Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) for your version of Windows. I decided not to install WAIK and instead I followed the very good tutorial at http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/getwaiktools to get imagex.exe without downloading the full WAIK suite (took about a minute to download and very little hard drive space).
5) Mount en_windows_8_x64_dvd_915440.iso with the appropriate utility so that it appears as a DVD drive on My Computer (eg. use the free Slysoft Virtual CloneDrive utility : http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html ).
6) Create two empty directories for building the modified image, eg. C:\img_mount and C:\img_wim . Copy Install.wim from the mounted iso, located in the Sources subdirectory, to C:\img_wim and run DISM GUI.
7) Click on Chose WIM and select C:\img_wim\install.wim , click on Choose Folder and select c:\img_mount . Finally, click on Mount WIM.
8) After the mounting process finishes, click on the Drive Management tab and on the Choose Driver Folder button. Select the folder where you fully extracted all the drivers in. Make sure that both the Force Unsigned and Recurse options are ticked. Click on Add Drivers and wait until the process finishes.
9) Click on the Mount Control tab, click on Dismount WIM and answer Yes when asked to apply changes.
The modified image is ready and is stored in C:\img_wim
10) Now, insert a USB stick on your computer and run RMPrepUSB (I used a 32GB stick).
Make sure that the stick is correctly shown at the top of the screen, click on 'WinPEv2/WinPEv3/Vista/Win7 bootable [BOOTMGR] (CC4)', click on NTFS and 'Boot as HDD (C: 2PTNS)' and finally click '6 Prepare Drive' at the bottom.
11) After the process is finished, run a command prompt, go to the directory where you installed Imagex.exe (step 3) and run :
imagex.exe /Apply C:\img_wim\install.wim 1 g:
(where g: is the USB stick drive letter)
This will write the modified Windows installation image with the Chromebox drivers we just added to the USB stick. In my case, the process took about 40 minutes to completion.
12) In order to prepare your USB stick for booting Windows, within a command prompt run :
g:\windows\system32\bcdboot g:\windows /s g: /v
(where g: is the USB stick drive letter - you might need to first run
g:
cd \windows\system32
before running the above bcdboot command )
When this process is complete, you can close the command prompt and safely eject the USB stick.
Now insert your USB stick to your chromebox, turn it on, at the white debug screen press Ctrl-L and when prompted press the Escape key. Select your USB stick from the list of drives and Windows should boot. After all devices are detected and a few reboots, Windows will prompt you for a valid product key and the operating system will install/work correctly from your USB stick.
I would advise that you completely disable automatic updates (or selectively update your system). If the update to Windows 8.1 is installed, the stick might stop booting on your Chromebox.
Many thanks to the amazing Kodi community, the people that posted in this thread (DocG / gkingsmill / Matt Devo / etc) and to the authors of the above mentioned web pages / tools / tutorials who made all of this possible!
--------------------------------------------
Update 28/3/2015 :
Some people may find this useful : when I'd like to experiment with my installation of Windows on Chromebox, I make a sector-by-sector image of my USB stick beforehand to my computer's hard drive using RMPrepUSB. Either reading from or writing to the entirety of my Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate USB 3.0 stick (32 GB) takes just 8 minutes, compared to the 45 minutes required by imagex.exe .
In order to store a full image of a USB stick to your computer :
1) have your USB stick attached to your computer and run RMPrepUSB
2) click on the Drive->File icon and select the path and filename of your new image file
3) when prompted for drive sector start position, length, file start byte position, leave the default values and click ok
4) finally, when prompted by a pop-up window to verify all specified options, click OK in order to start the process
In order to restore a stored image of a USB stick from your hard drive :
1) have your USB stick attached to your computer and run RMPrepUSB
2) click on the File -> Drive icon and select the image file to be restored
3) when prompted for file start byte, drive start sector position and length, leave the default values and click ok
4) finally, when prompted by a pop-up window to verify all specified options, click OK in order to start the process
--------------------------------------------
Update 30/3/2015 :
In order to enable Windows Store and download eg. a version of Netflix supporting 1080p / Dolby Digital playback, please check this article (many thanks to FredFF for this info) :
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hyperyash/archiv...hines.aspx
Also, if your system's Device Manager panel has a yellow exclamation point post-installation, you might need to install the Intel Management Engine driver from the above-mentioned Gigabyte site. This driver might be unnecessary depending on the firmware used. Also, it should not be installed on HP Chromeboxes since it can cause crashes / boot failures - thanks to all people that reported this.
2015-03-23, 20:50
Wow so complex installing windows. Linux is so easy with pretty well every driver under the sun built in.
2015-03-23, 21:22
Marcus0,
thanks for sharing your success making HDMI audio work with windows, I have a Sony Tv too and i'd love to connect it to a full working windows chromebox!
I have 1 question: using your tutorial it's possible to install windows directly on the chromebox (with HDMI audio) or you need to boot always from the USB pen?
Thanks in advance!!!
Luca
thanks for sharing your success making HDMI audio work with windows, I have a Sony Tv too and i'd love to connect it to a full working windows chromebox!
I have 1 question: using your tutorial it's possible to install windows directly on the chromebox (with HDMI audio) or you need to boot always from the USB pen?
Thanks in advance!!!
Luca
2015-03-23, 21:30
(2015-03-23, 20:50)nickr Wrote: Wow so complex installing windows. Linux is so easy with pretty well every driver under the sun built in.
True, I'd rather (and do) use Linux but it's good to have options..
Besides, all these steps could be automated through a single script, then you would just click a button and wait until your bootable usb stick is ready
2015-03-23, 22:13
(2015-03-23, 21:22)nicorobin Wrote: Marcus0,
thanks for sharing your success making HDMI audio work with windows, I have a Sony Tv too and i'd love to connect it to a full working windows chromebox!
I have 1 question: using your tutorial it's possible to install windows directly on the chromebox (with HDMI audio) or you need to boot always from the USB pen?
Hi Luca,
Unfortunately, the method described above can only be used with an external USB pen at the moment (haven't tried it with a USB hard drive but I don't see why it wouldn't work). Installing Windows to the internal SSD should be possible through coreboot, as mentioned in some posts in this thread, eg. :
(2014-08-28, 07:42)DocG Wrote: Follow the steps to flash the Coreboot firmware. After that, you can just install Windows from a USB stick (use a fast USB3 stick) onto the internal SSD.
Please note that the base installation of Windows 8 on my USB stick required about 14 GB - the factory-installed internal SSD has a theoretical capacity of 16GB, so one would probably have to swap it out with a bigger one beforehand.
2015-03-24, 01:08
(2015-03-23, 20:50)nickr Wrote: Wow so complex installing windows. Linux is so easy with pretty well every driver under the sun built in.It's not quite that bad. He chose to integrate the drivers into the install media instead of loading them after the fact. Unless it doesn't work correctly when they're loaded after the fact.
2015-03-24, 15:03
(2015-03-23, 22:13)marcus0 Wrote:(2015-03-23, 21:22)nicorobin Wrote: Marcus0,
thanks for sharing your success making HDMI audio work with windows, I have a Sony Tv too and i'd love to connect it to a full working windows chromebox!
I have 1 question: using your tutorial it's possible to install windows directly on the chromebox (with HDMI audio) or you need to boot always from the USB pen?
Hi Luca,
Unfortunately, the method described above can only be used with an external USB pen at the moment (haven't tried it with a USB hard drive but I don't see why it wouldn't work). Installing Windows to the internal SSD should be possible through coreboot, as mentioned in some posts in this thread, eg. :
[hand.
Thanks for your quick answer, just another question: it's windows fast with the USB 3.0 pen?
Thanks again, bye!
2015-03-25, 02:46
2015-03-25, 02:58
(2015-03-25, 02:46)marcus0 Wrote: Yes, its quite fast - for example, from pressing '2', in order to boot from USB, to Windows 8's tiles start screen appearing takes about 20 seconds.
so which audio drivers is it using - the default 'High Definition Audio device' ones from MS, or the 'Intel Display Audio' ones bundled as part of the graphics driver?
