MP 7,1 How To: Install Windows 11 on Mac Pro 7,1 (painless)

[prefuse07]

Having recently gone through this process -- along the way, I found myself googling this a lot; and I could not find one straight-forward answer, just a bunch of different answers from different sources, all utilizing different methods.

So using my past experiences getting Windows 10 and 11 running smooooothly on my trusty old 5,1 with OpenCore (through MANY different methods), I've decided to compile this guide for any future 7,1 owners that wish to (painlessly) install Windows 11 on their fantastic machine.

I have been having major issues with Windows 11 22H2 lately, so i've rolled back to 21H2, and I don't recommend 22H2 to anyone.

Lastly, if you are planning on installing Windows to a drive OTHER than the stock Apple NVME, i.e. you have a Sonnet J3i (like me), the drive that will receive Windows must be connected directly via SATA.

In other words, you CANNOT use the USB 3.0 port or PCIe connected drives, because Bootcamp will give you the following error:

With that said, let's get started:

Here we go, first use Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows 10:

1. On your Mac Pro 7,1
2. With a drive connected via SATA
3. With the backplane USB 3.0 port disconnected (NO drives connected via SATA>USB 3.0)
4. With all PCIe drives (i.e. NVME) disconnected (NO drives connected via PCIe)
5. With your 7,1 fully assembled and powered on
6. From within macOS
7. Download a Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft
8. Now, use Bootcamp Assistant to Install Windows 10 on your 7,1 to your SATA drive
9. Once Windows is finished installing
10. From within Windows
11. Download the MCT Tool
12. Within the folder
13. Run MediaCreationTool.bat
14. Select 11
15. Auto Upgrade
16. The MCT Tool will take care of everything for you, and your system will restart several times
17. Activate your Windows 11 and enjoy

***Note: if you had disconnected any PCIe drives or a USB 3.0 drive, per 3 and 4 above:

1. Shut down your machine
2. Disassemble the 7,1
3. Reconnect your PCIe drive and/or SATA to USB 3.0 drive
4. Make sure everything is in order
5. Reassemble your 7,1
6. Power back on
7. From within your target OS
8. Format your reconnected drive(s) in Windows (or macOS if that is your intended target)

The last thing I will add is that you will discover a WinInstall partition on your desktop. It's safe to delete, and here are the steps:

1. From within Windows
2. Open Disk Manager
3. Delete the WinInstall partition
4. To reabsorb the unallocated 10 gigs
5. You will find that your C drive will be greyed out (it won't let you expand your C drive to reabsorb)
6. Download Niubi Partition Editor
7. Watch the below video to quickly reabsorb the unallocated 10 gigs back into your C drive:

Hope this helps someone in the future. Thanks for reading!

 

[avro707]

Excellent- the process was fussy for me to do with NVME drives on a Sonnet card.

Glad you got it to run smoothly.

Where I deviated was that I had enough spare NVME storage that I could run the Windows setup process from the NVME which made the installer run very fast.

 

[mattspace]

7. Once you've got Windows 10 successfully installed

7a. Ensure you are booted into the Windows install?
8. etc

 

[prefuse07]

7a. Ensure you are booted into the Windows install?
8. etc

Thanks, i've updated the instructions!

 

[startergo]

There is an automatic upgrade once Windows 10 is installed:

GitHub - AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat: Universal MCT wrapper script for all Windows 10/11 versions from 1507 to 21H2!

Universal MCT wrapper script for all Windows 10/11 versions from 1507 to 21H2! - AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat

github.com

 

[prefuse07]

There is an automatic upgrade once Windows 10 is installed:

GitHub - AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat: Universal MCT wrapper script for all Windows 10/11 versions from 1507 to 21H2!

Universal MCT wrapper script for all Windows 10/11 versions from 1507 to 21H2! - AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat

github.com

Yes, this is one of many methods that I have used in the past on my 5,1, and I even wrote instructions on it back in January 2022 -- however, with this method you DO still need to disable the TPM requirements, despite what it says on github.

When I used the MCT Tool method to upgrade my cMP's Windows 10, I disabled TPM via the regedit method. Just check out the link I've provided.

 

[startergo]

Yes, this is one of many methods that I have used in the past on my 5,1, and I even wrote instructions on it back in January 2022 -- however, with this method you DO still need to disable the TPM requirements, despite what it says on github.

When I used the MCT Tool method to upgrade my cMP's Windows 10, I disabled TPM via the regedit method. Just check out the link I've provided. No USB creations involved. Purely automatic upgrade.

I used this repo to upgrade from Windows 10 to 11 on my MacBook Pro. Nothing else was needed.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Why does Windows 10 need to be installed first if it's going on a drive other than the stock Apple SSD?

 

[prefuse07]

Why does Windows 10 need to be installed first if it's going on a drive other than the stock Apple SSD?

So you can get the bootcamp drivers for keyboard, mouse, and 7,1 hardware? and then also you can bootcamp back into macOS (since the 7,1 doesn't use OpenCore)

 

[MisterAndrew]

So you can get the bootcamp drivers for keyboard, mouse, and 7,1 hardware? and then also you can bootcamp back into macOS (since the 7,1 doesn't use OpenCore)

I don't understand. Why can't you get Boot Camp drivers if you install Windows 11 without 10 first? Couldn't they be downloaded on macOS and put onto the USB drive? Your first install steps don't say to install Windows 10 first. Why is it needed if installing on a separate drive?

 

[prefuse07]

I don't understand. Why can't you get Boot Camp drivers if you install Windows 11 without 10 first? Couldn't they be downloaded on macOS and put onto the USB drive? Your first install steps don't say to install Windows 10 first. Why is it needed if installing on a separate drive?

On the 7,1 -- Boot camp installs Windows 10, not 11 (since the 7,1 doesn't meet Windows 11's "TPM Requirement"). Once Windows 10 is installed, from within Windows 10 on the 7,1, all you have to do is insert the USB stick that you made with Rufus, which takes care of the TPM Req, and update to Windows 11.

What is so confusing here?

How would I boot into Windows without Boot camp? How would I boot from Windows back into macOS without Boot camp?

The 7,1 does NOT run OpenCore, so there is no bootpicker at startup. You can't just put any old drive and expect it to work like on a 5,1 running OpenCore...

Also, please read the full instructions, it's all covered there.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I think I understand now. The first steps you wrote are just for making the USB installer. I thought they were two different methods, for stock SSD and SATA drive.

You can boot any old drive if you configure the T2 that way in Recovery Mode. I had to do that to boot a memtest86 USB. The boot picker shows up if you hold down the option key at startup.

 

[prefuse07]

I think I understand now. The first steps you wrote are just for making the USB installer. I thought they were two different methods, for stock SSD and SATA drive.

You can boot any old drive if you configure the T2 that way in Recovery Mode. I had to do that to boot a memtest86 USB. The boot picker shows up if you hold down the option key at startup.

Ah, good to know!

See! Had I not made this thread, I never would have found that out! Thanks!

 

[avkills]

If you modify the T2 security settings you can boot off USB sticks on the 7,1; I did that to do a fresh install of Ventura, although I did set it back to higher security afterwards.

I think if you remove the security you could install Windows with or without bootcamp. (I am not going to try it though...lol)

 

[MisterAndrew]

I keep getting the error that's the title of this Reddit thread. I've re-downloaded the Windows 10 ISO and re-ran Boot Camp Assistant. I'm trying to install it to a SATA connected drive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bootcamp/comments/reckiy
I've tried making the edit shown in this thread, but it's still giving the same error.

Bootcamp install windows to black screen - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

I have three NVMe PCIe drives installed. Do I need to remove those?

 

[prefuse07]

I keep getting the error that's the title of this Reddit thread. I've re-downloaded the Windows 10 ISO and re-ran Boot Camp Assistant. I'm trying to install it to a SATA connected drive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bootcamp/comments/reckiy
I've tried making the edit shown in this thread, but it's still giving the same error.

Bootcamp install windows to black screen - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

I have three NVMe PCIe drives installed. Do I need to remove those?

That SATA drive -- Open up Diskutil and format it as: MacOS Extended , GUID. See if that does the trick.

I don't think the PCIe NVMe need to be removed, unless you're seeing this error when you open Boot Camp:

 

[MisterAndrew]

Thanks. I got it figured out. I removed all the extra drives, so it was only the stock Apple SSD and the SATA SSD for Windows. Windows must have been getting confused seeing the other drives. I remember I had to do the same thing when I installed Windows on the 5,1.

 

[prefuse07]

Thanks. I got it figured out. I removed all the extra drives, so it was only the stock Apple SSD and the SATA SSD for Windows. Windows must have been getting confused seeing the other drives. I remember I had to do the same thing when I installed Windows on the 5,1.

oh, so you DO have to remove PCIe drives?

 

[MisterAndrew]

Yep. Now that I have the other drives re-installed there's no option to restart to my NVMe macOS boot drive from Windows; only to the built-in SSD. When I tried to restart to my NVMe boot drive from the built-in drive the Mac shut down after the first chime. Usually it chimes twice and then starts up (after changing startup drives). I don't know what's going on there; something with the T2 I guess. So I'll probably use the built-in drive as my boot drive so I don't have to deal with these weird issues.

 

[hwojtek]

Windows must have been getting confused seeing the other drives.

Windows doesn't like multiple bootable EFI partitions from multiple disks.
Also this whole "install Windows 10 so you can use bootcamp drivers" is nonsense. The only thing to install is brigadier to get the bootcamp drivers in a Windows-friendly form and 7zip to make brigadier work in W11, the W10 drivers will install and work without any problems.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Is it safe to remove the WinInstall partition Boot Camp created after Windows is installed? It's still there.

I moved my macOS boot install to the built-in Apple drive. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone on the Apple drive. Then I reinstalled macOS over the top of that to take care of any issues that may have created. It seems to be working well. When I signed out of iCloud on the old boot drive it asked me if I wanted to keep a copy of my iCloud photos and I said yes. So it downloaded all of the originals. I made the CCC clone after that. Then I just needed to sign back in on the new boot drive and everything's there.

 

[prefuse07]

Windows doesn't like multiple bootable EFI partitions from multiple disks.
Also this whole "install Windows 10 so you can use bootcamp drivers" is nonsense. The only thing to install is brigadier to get the bootcamp drivers in a Windows-friendly form and 7zip to make brigadier work in W11, the W10 drivers will install and work without any problems.

I understand where you're coming from, but it's not "install Windows 10 so you can use bootcamp drivers" it's "install bootcamp, which only installs Windows 10, so you can use bootcamp to bootcamp between Windows/macOS, and so you will have your hardware drivers for the 7,1" -- which yes, I suppose if you just use brigadier inside of Windows, you can do the same thing.

But again, how will you boot from macOS into Windows, and from Windows back into macOS WITHOUT bootcamp?

Remember, this is NOT a 5,1 running OpenCore, and I don't feel like playing around with the T2 chip.

I have had a few bad experiences in the past where Windows injected security certs into my 5,1's EFI and I ended up having to completely reformat those drives and start again, even WITH (older versions) of OpenCore this happened to me quite a few times (it was probably my mistake as well). Each time I thought my machine was bricked, but luckily I was able to salvage it.

Bootcamp and Windows 11 Pro are working fine for me on my 7,1, per the method I used in the OP, and I created this thread to try and share how simple it was for me, to try and help people. But if you know of a better method, and want to try it your own way, be my guest.

Is it safe to remove the WinInstall partition Boot Camp created after Windows is installed? It's still there.

I moved my macOS boot install to the built-in Apple drive. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone on the Apple drive. Then I reinstalled macOS over the top of that to take care of any issues that may have created. It seems to be working well. When I signed out of iCloud on the old boot drive it asked me if I wanted to keep a copy of my iCloud photos and I said yes. So it downloaded all of the originals. I made the CCC clone after that. Then I just needed to sign back in on the new boot drive and everything's there.

Yeah, go ahead and boot into Windows and then delete the WinInstall partition. Then you can "expand" your main C drive to reabsorb the unallocated 10 gigs.

You will find that your C drive will be greyed out (it won't let you expand) -- You can use Niubi Partition Editor:

I just did it and it worked just like the vid!

 

[Norbert Mikołajczyk]

Hi guys, any success with installing 22h2?

 

[prefuse07]

Hi guys, any success with installing 22h2?

22H2 is filled with problems, I had to go back to 21H2 and recommend staying away from 22H2 altogether.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

New bypass trick makes Windows 11 installation on unsupported systems a breeze

A recently discovered "trick" for bypassing the Windows 11 system requirement check during the OS installation is much more potent than initially thought. The same bypass method...

www.techspot.com

Seems the easiest way to install windows 11 is the IoT Enterprise edition, which does no hardware check.