Making PCR-800 working under Windows 10

 I bought PCR-800 back in 2008. So, today when I write this post, I own it for 14 years. I havent used it a lot in these years (nevertheless I substituted my main stage piano Kawai MP4 for one summer with this due to Kawai motherboard fried and I needed to replace it. Different story tho.) But when I used it, due to lack of driver support (last out of the box compatible OS is Windows 8.1 64bit) I kept it mostly in the bag and rarely connected it to my PC via Edirol FA-66 external sound card (also fried it once. Another different story tho.) using its MIDI port. Downside - I have to deal with power cable for my keyboard (but I am lazy person) instead of powering it using USB

During last Christmas break I found a time to research a little bit more about setting my PCR-800 for Windows 10. And some old Cakewalk forums had the info that Windows 8.1 drivers will work fine with one slight modification in the driver file. Without this driver my PCR-800 in the device manager was found as unknown hardware and windows did not offer any valid drivers for it.

Driver files often have their INF files which in plain text defines different details about the hardware and they are used to set the hardware up for the operating system. And that is also a problem. So, if the INF file is for Windows 8.1, then I have to modify the file so it is suitable also for Windows 10. 

First thing - download those drivers locally. 

Then - open INF file and find line which defines Manufacturer and replace the line

1. %MfgName%=Roland,NTamd64.6.2,NTamd64.7

with the line 

1. %MfgName%=Roland,NTamd64.10,NTamd64.7

Or in other words it is visible that NTamd64.6.2 which corresponds to Windows 8 is now replaced to NTamd64.10 which seemingly corresponds to windows 10. There are interesting info when I googled about these numbers, mostly all of them related to Roland hardware.

The other changes need to be done under the particular NTamdxxx section - the section name itself has to be renamed:

1. [Roland.NTamd64.6.2]

needs to be replaced with this line

1. [Roland.NTamd64.10]

I havent experimented with would it work if the driver will install if the rest of the sections (Roland, Roland.NTamd64.7 would be deleted. Cant take that for granted.

The last part is to disable the driver signature enforcement. There are some powershell and bcdedit techniques, but those did not work with my system. The last resort for me was to restart the windows 10 in advanced boot options (can be done through Update and Security dialogs or hitting F8 during the startup) and then select the option for booting the Windows 10 with driver signature enforcement turned off. That worked for me fine and I can now write my own sheet music in Sibelius.