Help Installing Windows 10 on Mac Pro 5,1

[zozomester]

Hi,
How to install Windows 10 on single Hyperx Predator AHCI SSD?
I always get an error message in windows installer ...
Is there any description for that?
Thank!

 

[GuiPol]

I would be interested by this too since i have the same hardware and want to achieve the same goal.. i'll update if i find something useful

 

[GuiPol]

I just wanted to add some info for anyone trying to do this in the future:
I have a mid 2012 cMP 5,2 ... I have upgraded the processors to dual Xenon 5690 (3.5GHz) CPUs, 48GB Ram, Nvidia GTX 1080Ti and I just had a hell of a time getting windows 10 onto boot camp onto it.

Here's what worked (for me)...
A real Windows 10 install DVD (i used windows 10 home) -- no way a USB key would boot, plist hacks included. No way. Had to go DVD (others here seem to have success downloading ISO from microsoft and extracting to a DVD to boot into... not sure what format you'd burn the DVD as, perhaps just universal format... i'm not sure though, i had a real windows disk).

A separate hard drive not a partitioned one. I formatted it first in disk utility as Windows NT.

At first many install attempts failed ... until i removed all the drives EXCEPT that one blank NT drive, and then the windows dvd was able to install to it.

I just finished doing it again (this time onto a SSD) and realized THIS TIME i had 2 drives installed. my mac hd and my bland win HD. But I also realized that this was appeared on the device 0 bus! so that is ACTUALLY the key, (i was mystified by some users saying you don't have to remove drives and some saying you do, now having failed with other drives in, then removing them, then getting my win drive to install (it was the only one so of course it was device 0), then putting a mac drive back in, turns out with both drives in, the windows one is still dev 0 so it now works as an install target even alongside other disks. That's the key. Foolproof method: take your other drives out. Or if you can ensure your windows drive is device 0, then you won't have to.


after windows installed, just open your bootcamp folder you downloaded (onto a usb thumb drive or whatever) version 5.1.5621 as others have said, and run setup.exe ... for me it worked without fail. all installers ran automatically from that one script. Others have noted that if it fails you have to run each installer in each driver folder individually. I didn't. I just ran setup.exe and i'm up and running.

Good luck
Tom.

Hello TOMBOT2000 !

i'm having a strange reaction from a newly installed windows 7 here on my mac pro 4 (flashed to 5).

I couldn't install windows 7 (neither bootcamp nor manual install would work) when the mac rebooted from the windows 7 DVD (which i know for SURE works) it would eventually get stuck at a blinking cursor in the upper left corner on a black background (DOS style if you know what i mean).

I've read here (from this post actually and another one) that the only way to get this working was to unplug all HFS/APFS drives and put the SSD (ntfs formatted) in bay 1... i did it, and to my surprise, it worked like a charm (the "why" remains a mystery but hey... i wont sweat it.)

But know that i've plugged back everyhting (SSD in HFS and HDDs in NTFS and HFS too), when i boot to my windows 7 (with bootcamp driver package installed of course!) it cannot "see" ANY DRIVE except the one it is installed on !!! I've got another NTFS drive which is not seen either and the superdrive, the optical drive from which i've installed windows 7 in the first place (!) is not seen either !!

As a "plus" the eject button from the keyboard does not work for superdrive (quite logical if it's not detected one might say..)

i'll try a SMC reset and PRAM reset too... Any input on that "strange behavior" ?? All drives except the one it is installed on are not appearing anywhere ! And there are no red marks or warning signs on the device manager, everything seems to have been installed right !

 

[Squuiid]

Any input on that "strange behavior" ?? All drives except the one it is installed on are not appearing anywhere ! And there are no red marks or warning signs on the device manager, everything seems to have been installed right !

BootCamp cannot see APFS formatted drives. If your drives are APFS then they will not be available to BootCamp.

 

[expede]

Which bootdrives did you use?
/Per

Hello TOMBOT2000 !

i'm having a strange reaction from a newly installed windows 7 here on my mac pro 4 (flashed to 5).

I couldn't install windows 7 (neither bootcamp nor manual install would work) when the mac rebooted from the windows 7 DVD (which i know for SURE works) it would eventually get stuck at a blinking cursor in the upper left corner on a black background (DOS style if you know what i mean).

I've read here (from this post actually and another one) that the only way to get this working was to unplug all HFS/APFS drives and put the SSD (ntfs formatted) in bay 1... i did it, and to my surprise, it worked like a charm (the "why" remains a mystery but hey... i wont sweat it.)

But know that i've plugged back everyhting (SSD in HFS and HDDs in NTFS and HFS too), when i boot to my windows 7 (with bootcamp driver package installed of course!) it cannot "see" ANY DRIVE except the one it is installed on !!! I've got another NTFS drive which is not seen either and the superdrive, the optical drive from which i've installed windows 7 in the first place (!) is not seen either !!

As a "plus" the eject button from the keyboard does not work for superdrive (quite logical if it's not detected one might say..)

i'll try a SMC reset and PRAM reset too... Any input on that "strange behavior" ?? All drives except the one it is installed on are not appearing anywhere ! And there are no red marks or warning signs on the device manager, everything seems to have been installed right !

 

[GuiPol]

BootCamp cannot see APFS formatted drives. If your drives are APFS then they will not be available to BootCamp.

Yes indeed, i have an NTFS drive and an HFS drive too (and the optical drive of course). Besides, i've got an APFS drive for HS but i have installed the free APFS driver (beta version) from paragon anyway (which works really well by the way).. so this is not the issue here trust me.
[doublepost=1529739355][/doublepost]

Which bootdrives did you use?
/Per

Hm i'm not sure i understand the question precisely.. So i'll try to answer the question in every aspect it may suggest..

The bootdrive is a samsung 860 EVO 240Gb (SSD). This is the drive i installed windows 7 SP1 on. And the one i boot windows on when i press "alt key".
The "main" boot drive (if we can call it that way anyway, since unlike "old windows" there is no MBR whatsoever now stored on this disk..) is a M2 Kingston Hyper X AHCI on it's own PCIe Card and has high sierra installed on it.

I did the windows installation "manually" since bootcamp app was a pain in the a**. And cloning my already installed windows 7 (on my mac pro 5) with winclone and acronis was a nogo (made a post about it by the way and i would be happy to have your point of view on this matter too: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/windows-7-ssd-bootcamp-and-winclone.2124425/#post-26179831)

So windows was installing on this drive, which was alone in the mac pro 4 (except for the superdrive of course since it's an install from the DVD). I've formatted it in FAT on high sierra juste before removing everything..
All went really smoothly.
Install finished quickly then proceeded to install bootcamp driver package.
Nothing to say about it, all was good, no exclamation mark or warning signs on the device manager. and that, alone, is very important to me ^^

BUT, when i reconnected all the drives (the APFS, the HFS, the NTFS ones)... well, only the bootdrive (samsung evo860) with the newly installed windows is appearing in the windows explorer... I must say it's unusual for windows not to warn you (bug you even one might say) that new hardware has been detected...

For information purpose i might add, i've used the SAME windows DVD used to install my windows 7 sp1 on my macpro 5 (on its own drive too) and it detects all the disks (APFS, HFS, NTFS of course) everything.. and optical drive is working on the 5.. On the macpro 5 i didn't had to remove all ac os formatted drive to install windows, it was straightforward... how weird is that ?

 

[expede]

Yes, you have done everything right. But, do Windows come the apple drives? For the keyboard? Does Windows know that it has been installed on a Mac? No it have not. You need the drives to get the hardware to function right.

Use BootCamp 5 and BootCamp 4

/Per

I did the windows installation "manually" since bootcamp app was a pain in the a**.

 

[GuiPol]

Yes, you have done everything right. But, do Windows come the apple drives? For the keyboard? Does Windows know that it has been installed on a Mac? No it have not. You need the drives to get the hardware to function right.

Use BootCamp 5 and BootCamp 4

/Per

you mean bootcamp driver package 5.1.5621 ? yes i've already installed it of course. All went well from that point of vue.. every controller on every bus and every port has it's driver installed..disk is bootable and everything works really ! but it still cannot see the other drives and dvd player/writer...

 

[expede]

You could try Paragon, they do have APFS for Windows. You know, Windows can not "see" APFS drives. The CD player, that is a different "ball game". Is it a native CD player you got?

https://www.paragon-software.com/

/Per

you mean bootcamp driver package 5.1.5621 ? yes i've already installed it of course. All went well from that point of vue.. every controller on every bus and every port has it's driver installed..disk is bootable and everything works really ! but it still cannot see the other drives and dvd player/writer...

 

[GuiPol]

Hello my friend,
Yes good suggestion in fact but i've already installed paragon APFS for windows (it's in beta stage but works quite well indeed) and i've even installed HFS+ for windows which works very well too.
Truth is : even NTFS drive it cannot see (native windows drives)..it can only "see" it's own install disk.. this got to be this bios emulation thing that did get awry.. windows is really weird whereas my other one, on the mac 5, went without a hitch ! Same dvd, same technique..
I don't know how to "force it" to re scan all the peripherals .. i'll dig that tomorrow..

 

[Tesseract]

@GuiPol To me, it sounds like the Windows and/or Bootcamp drivers aren't getting properly installed for some reason. Your eject key not working is telling. Are you seeing a Bootcamp control panel in the tray (Gray diamond looking icon)? Maybe try installing the drivers after you have plugged in all your drives?

 

[star-affinity]

…the computer will reboot but I get an error that says "No bootable device --insert boot disk and press any key"

My I ask what you did to fix that? I also have a non-EFI GPU and can't see the boot manager. I got the ”No bootable device” error after the partition table of my Windows install from MBR to GPT (maybe there's no point in doing this since I understand the Mac's EFI can't benefit from the Windows features that gets possible on a PC with UEFI?).

Can the problem be that I have to change my Windows install to EFI bootable now that I have changed the partition table to GPT?

Or maybe I should just swtich back to MBR if there's no big point in having the partition table as GPT on a Mac running Windows 10.

Edit:

It says here that MacPro5,1 does not support booting Windows into EFI mode: https://support.twocanoes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003286483

Best to just forget about it then (and use MBR as the partition scheme?).

 

[annsharkey5]

Download the bootcamp drivers. I update Windows and installed Boot Camp 6 drivers by running msiexec /i BootCamp64.msi from Administrative CMD window, which is located in Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple directory. Then I connected all the other drives.

In macOS High Sierra I installed Boot Runner from Twocanoes. For more of this just go to apple stack exchange. Go2top HotSpot Shield.

 

[h9826790]

It says here that MacPro5,1 does not support booting Windows into EFI mode: https://support.twocanoes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003286483

I am quite sure that's only base on Windows installation by using Bootcamp.

 

[star-affinity]

I am quite sure that's only base on Windows installation by using Bootcamp.

Yes, sure seems like it since it absolutely works to boot into EFI mode if omitting Bootcamp.

By the way, do you know of a way to get built-in audio to work when booted into Windows 10 in EFI mode? If not I was thinking I perhaps can install the driver for my USB audio card and use only that for audio.

 

[hfg]

Yes, sure seems like it since it absolutely works to boot into EFI mode if omitting Bootcamp.

By the way, do you know of a way to get built-in audio to work when booted into Windows 10 in EFI mode? If not I was thinking I perhaps can install the driver for my USB audio card and use only that for audio.

Did you download the BootCamp driver package and install it after you installed Windows (just as you would do with any standard purchased motherboard)? That should have all the device drivers you need for the Mac under Windows.

 

[star-affinity]

Did you download the BootCamp driver package and install it after you installed Windows (just as you would do with any standard purchased motherboard)? That should have all the device drivers you need for the Mac under Windows.

Thanks, I hadn't and it seems to work fine now. 🙂 It's just that I remember there were troubles with audio when booted into Windows as UEFI mode a year ago or two when I tried last time. Good it seems to work now. I'm just thinking loud now and guessing, but maybe one of the many firmware updates to the MacPro5,1 that came during High Sierra has helped?

 

[JedNZ]

I have just installed the release version of Paragon's APFS for Windows. I was hoping I might be able to boot back into MacOS if this software was able to write an APFS boot efi partition, but no luck. In Win10 I still have to click on Restart in Mac OSX from the Bootcamp icon, which boots into Recovery HD, and from there select my primary MacOS drive.

 

[h9826790]

I have just installed the release version of Paragon's APFS for Windows. I was hoping I might be able to boot back into MacOS if this software was able to write an APFS boot efi partition, but no luck. In Win10 I still have to click on Restart in Mac OSX from the Bootcamp icon, which boots into Recovery HD, and from there select my primary MacOS drive.

Interesting, that will automatically reboot you to Recovery Partition?

 

[JedNZ]

Interesting, that will automatically reboot you to Recovery Partition?

Yeah, I have no idea why it’s booting to that particular Recovery HD either. Pretty sure it’s the one on my primary boot drive (Accelsior S SATA III PCIe adapter with 850 EVO SSD). I have two other spinners that have Recovery HDs on them. So how do I tell? And more importantly, how can I change it to boot to my primary MacOS drive (HS) instead of the Recovery HD?

On a side note, every time I restart (MacOS to MacOS, or Win10 to MacOS) my Time Machine does a completely new backup and wipes the previous TM backups. Takes several hours for it to perform the full backup - Grrrr! Luckily I do other backups (with archives) using CCC.

 

[SnakeCoils]

Well, I add my fresh experience in installing Win10 on my MacPros (flashed 4.1 -> 5.1 and also 5.1 native), I have not much experience on the Microsoft side but this path worked for me.

1) Choose a dedicated empty internal SATA disk, we are not using BootCamp Assistant and my experience trying various PCIe-SATA hard cards was not so succesful.

2) From OSX Disk Utility format the choosen drive in a single MBR / MS-DOS Fat partition naming it whatever you want (I named "WIN10" for clarity during the next install)

3) Insert the Win10 DVD install and choose from Startup Disk preferences this DVD as boot volume

4) Turn off the MacPro, unplug all the other PCIe/SATA disks except the one you are about to install Win10

5) Turn on the computer and allow the system to boot from the DVD Win10 install (it will takes a long time with that blue window in the middle on the screen.

6) After answered the first questions the installer prompts, you have to choose the disk/partition where install. At this point you should see only one valid disk with one single partition. Select it and Format (do not eliminate, create and format, just format and stop there)

7) Go ahead and let the whole install process happening...

8) Win10 should have drivers updated enough to allow you a interne connection so open your favorite browser and download the well known utility Brigadier

9) Search and Install also the 7zip utility since it is needed by Brigadier for its tasks

10) Launch Brigadier with this argument "brigadier -m iMacPro1,1" and wait until the process finished

11) You will find a drawer named "BootCamp-041-55643" (this is true at present date)

12) Open the Terminal as Administrator and navigate thru the folders until "Bootcamp/Drivers/Apple" section

13) Enter "msiexec /i BootCamp.msi" and go ahead in the install process until the end.

14) Close the Terminal since you don't need it anymore

At this point you could think everything is done but sadly this is not true. While the installer says "I am installing this, that and everything else is needed" you will discover it installs almost nothing but Sofware Update, the BootCamp app (but not the grey square icon in the toolbar) and HFS+ driver (but NOT the APFS and at present I have no idea how to force it to install).
Additionally you will discover that BootCamp utility will not allow you to choose a boot volume and every time you press the "Apply" button it will exit with an error about missing privileges.

Also you have no Bluetooth at all, in Device Manager you can see the yellow triangle near it so let's try to fix as much as possible these troubles.

Missing BLUETOOTH

The driver is luckily enclosed in the $WinPEDriver$/AppleBluetoothBroadcom64 folder, simply open Windows Device Manager, select the broken Bluetooth icon in the list, choose to update the driver manually and navigate to the folder above, select, install and voilà, an happy blue icon in the tray bar and no more errors in Device list.

Missing BOOTCAMP functionality (no APFS)

To enable again the switch between Win and OSX (HFS+ only) you have to tell to windows about the special custom hardware resources a MacPro have and this can be done installing the AppleHAL extension in the Bootcamp/Drivers/Apple drawer. Simply right click on the MacHALdriver icon with the gear wheel, select Install and reboot. After that you will be able to select the Mac partition as bootable volume without errors. Please note that the grey square Icon in the bottom tray bar is still missing, to enable it you have to install the Keyboard extensions, not really sure what but at a certain point it will appear.

Missing APPLE Keyboard Support (wired)

You have for sure seen that "Volume Up/Down/Mute" special keys are not functional and also the eject button does nothing. Well, for the Eject button I have still not found a solution but for the others it will be easy after the install (in this order) of

AppleKeyboard
AppleKeyManager

in the usual driver section with the same procedure seen for AppleHAL. After the installation of KeyManager you will be prompted to reboot and after you should have both the Volume keys functionality and the BootCamp launch icon in the toolbar. If not you may try to install also

AppleNULLDriver

but at this point everything should work fine. As said before the eject button is non functional and I have no idea how to fix it using the official Apple stuff.
For wireless keyboards and mouse you may should try the other specific extensions, for me the above procedure worked for the hardware I have.

The worst part is that APFS support is missing, I have read here and there that BootCamp 6.1 from iMacPro should install it but it did not occour at all.

I have not used the BootCamp installer from 5.1 because it wants to be on Win7 and obviously we are not there so I go straight to the 6.1 (the ImacPro1,1 version)

BEWARE! IF YOU RELAUNCH BOOTCAMP INSTALLER IT WILL UNINSTALL ALL THE DRIVERS ABOVE AND YOU WILL HAVE TO REDO THE WHOLE PROCEDURE AGAIN!

I hope this little guide could be helpful for someone 🙂

 

[Fish1313]

Thanks SnakeCoils for that stiff explanation!

But unfortunately there some more bugs out there...
Maybe i am blind - correct me please, but i can not find any similar cases.

I followed your tutorial but if i reattach my PCIe SSD the Win10 (1903) wont come up anymore.
A blinking underscore on black screen - nothing more. (same as i tried to boot from Win10 DVD)

Setup: cMP5,1 / 10.13.6@PCIe SSD (IO Crest) / Win10@SSD (Slot3) / GT120 (Bootscreen) / Vega 56 / 40GB RAM

StepByStep: Bootcamp Assistant > select SSD (format) > shutdown - Unplug all but SSD in Slot3 - insert Win10-DVD - Bootup with "C" - Diskpart > Clean - Install Win > doing all updates to 1903 - Brigadier > Bootcamp5 (install BT and Audio) > Bootcamp6 (install bootcamp.msi) - Reboot (all is fine till now) - shutdown > reattach PCIeSSD - reboot (macOS see partition Bootcamp but not shown in Startvolume pane) - reboot holding "alt" tried "Windows" = black screen + promt

What i doing wrong?!

Thanks in advance

 

[expede]

Hi!

What bootRom do you got? And why do you not use slot 1 for install? Why use PCIe slot? I´m not sure that you can use PCIe for Windows.

Doc

Thanks SnakeCoils for that stiff explanation!

But unfortunately there some more bugs out there...
Maybe i am blind - correct me please, but i can not find any similar cases.

I followed your tutorial but if i reattach my PCIe SSD the Win10 (1903) wont come up anymore.
A blinking underscore on black screen - nothing more. (same as i tried to boot from Win10 DVD)

Setup: cMP5,1 / 10.13.6@PCIe SSD (IO Crest) / Win10@SSD (Slot3) / GT120 (Bootscreen) / Vega 56 / 40GB RAM

StepByStep: Bootcamp Assistant > select SSD (format) > shutdown - Unplug all but SSD in Slot3 - insert Win10-DVD - Bootup with "C" - Diskpart > Clean - Install Win > doing all updates to 1903 - Brigadier > Bootcamp5 (install BT and Audio) > Bootcamp6 (install bootcamp.msi) - Reboot (all is fine till now) - shutdown > reattach PCIeSSD - reboot (macOS see partition Bootcamp but not shown in Startvolume pane) - reboot holding "alt" tried "Windows" = black screen + promt

What i doing wrong?!

Thanks in advance

 

[Fish1313]

Thanks expede,
my Bootrom is 144.x (i have done it according to the tutorial by h9826790)
My main os 10.13.6 resides on a 256GB SM951 AHCI M.2 SSD @ IO-Crest PCIe switch card for heavy speed improvements. I working most in CGI and movieediting so i appreciate that much.
I do need Win10 for initialize the Thunderbolt card and hw-programming.
Win10 should take place on a SSD within a normal slot provided - i dont care about the number!?
all i know is that the presence of the pcie ssd is related to the issue... but why?!

tia

ps: i need to upgrade my footer ;-)

 

[SnakeCoils]

I had not this issues on my cMP 2010 (firmware 144.x) but on another 2009 (also firmware 144.x) where I just installed Win10 it show exactly this issue. Googling around I have found a possible fix (it is for Win7 but it could work for Win10 too) at this link but I yet have to test it.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...en-blinking-cursor-for-ages-pre-boot.1244376/

I do not think is 2009/2010 related, just the way I installed Win10 on a machine and on the other: on the 2010 I installed it over a Win7 hard drive (without formatting but cleaning all, not retaining anything of the previous operating system). On the 2009 I have followed the steps of my previous post. Later I will try this fix and I will post my results.