Ok, so after many searches I see lots of threads which are quite old and after experiencing the PITA of trying to get Windows 11 Pro installed onto the apple internal nvme drive in a 7,1 I bagged at a bargain price, I thought I would produce this quick guide to help others:
1) If you have any other usb storage or PCIe storage cards connected (such as sonnet etc) remove them prior to doing this or bootcamp will fail!
2) Download the most recent Windows 10 ISO (I know we are going to install Windows 11 but trust me) from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10iso
3) Start the Bootcamp app from utilities and partition your internal apple SSD (I had a 2TB drive so did roughly 1TB/1TB Mac/windows).
4) Select the Windows 10 ISO that you downloaded from the bootcamp app as a source (no need to prep a usb stick yet).
5) Bootcamp will go away and download all drivers then reboot and take you through the process of
installing Windows 10 (Select Win 10 Pro when prompted to choose windows version)
6) When Windows 10 Pro has installed (doesn't need to be licensed yet), you will be prompted to install
the bootcamp drivers through its wizard, go ahead and complete that.
7) Download the latest Windows 11 Pro ISO from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 and Rufus from here: https://rufus.ie/en/
8) Run Rufus and make sure the (bypass TPM) option is selected and select the Win 11 Pro ISO that
you downloaded.
9) Connect your (at least 8Gb) USB stick to the mac and write the modified windows 11 pro image using Rufus.
10) Make sure the Win 11 Pro USB stick is mounted under windows 10 and run the setup.exe, it will then
upgrade your mac pro 7,1 to Windows 11 Pro.
11) Buy an license key and activate Windows 11 Pro
12) Install any PCIe storage cards back into the Mac Pro.
I also found downloading the AMD drivers for my 6900XT improved things massively under gaming, I downloaded the main detection software from AMD and just installed the driver only.
If you have sonnet PCIe based storage grab the windows drivers from their site.
NB: This is for installing on the internal apple disk only for the purpose of dual booting MacOS and Windows 11 Pro, and also requires no changes to the boot security setting.
I updated to the latest version of MacOS (currently 15.6) before performing this.
hope this helps!
1) If you have any other usb storage or PCIe storage cards connected (such as sonnet etc) remove them prior to doing this or bootcamp will fail!
2) Download the most recent Windows 10 ISO (I know we are going to install Windows 11 but trust me) from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10iso
3) Start the Bootcamp app from utilities and partition your internal apple SSD (I had a 2TB drive so did roughly 1TB/1TB Mac/windows).
4) Select the Windows 10 ISO that you downloaded from the bootcamp app as a source (no need to prep a usb stick yet).
5) Bootcamp will go away and download all drivers then reboot and take you through the process of
installing Windows 10 (Select Win 10 Pro when prompted to choose windows version)
6) When Windows 10 Pro has installed (doesn't need to be licensed yet), you will be prompted to install
the bootcamp drivers through its wizard, go ahead and complete that.
7) Download the latest Windows 11 Pro ISO from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 and Rufus from here: https://rufus.ie/en/
8) Run Rufus and make sure the (bypass TPM) option is selected and select the Win 11 Pro ISO that
you downloaded.
9) Connect your (at least 8Gb) USB stick to the mac and write the modified windows 11 pro image using Rufus.
10) Make sure the Win 11 Pro USB stick is mounted under windows 10 and run the setup.exe, it will then
upgrade your mac pro 7,1 to Windows 11 Pro.
11) Buy an license key and activate Windows 11 Pro
12) Install any PCIe storage cards back into the Mac Pro.
I also found downloading the AMD drivers for my 6900XT improved things massively under gaming, I downloaded the main detection software from AMD and just installed the driver only.
If you have sonnet PCIe based storage grab the windows drivers from their site.
NB: This is for installing on the internal apple disk only for the purpose of dual booting MacOS and Windows 11 Pro, and also requires no changes to the boot security setting.
I updated to the latest version of MacOS (currently 15.6) before performing this.
hope this helps!
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