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Installing Windows 11 Pro on Mac 7,1 for those of us who have just grabbed one at a bargain price!

Z

zarf2007

macrumors 6502
Original poster
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!
 
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Tony Danger said:
You don’t need any of this massive list here.

1: Install Windows 10 with Bootcamp
2: In W10, Run Microsoft Activation Scripts
3: Trigger the Windows 11 upgrade in MAS


Done. Easy peasy.
Click to expand...
Ok but the bit about uninstalling pcie storage cards is important or bootcamp fails.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
zarf2007 said:
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:
...
Click to expand...
Personally, I think you did a good job explaining the install process of Windows 11.
I am still using Windows 10, which was so easy to install.
And there is talk of millions of PCs that are still on Windows 10, because of the hardware tpm requirement.
So it's not just a mac problem.

Any well written guide should be welcomed, in my opinion.

Tony Danger said:
...
3: Trigger the Windows 11 upgrade in MAS
...
Click to expand...
I had to do an internet search on this 😆
 
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If I'm doing this with a clean install of both macOS and Windows, I would partition using macOS Disk Utility then erase the other partition as MS-DOS [FAT].

Instead of using the Boot Camp Assistant, I would use Brigadier to download the drivers for use in Windows, although the utility has not been updated for almost 3 years now. It's what I used to download the drivers for use in my 15" MacBook Pro 2015 when I tried installing Windows 8.x and Windows 10 although I have not tried installing Windows 11 yet.

Now as for bypassing the system checks to install Windows 11, I would download the iOT LTSC release of Windows 11 since it does not have those checks enabled. Just like what is said by @Tony Danger use Microsoft Activation Scripts once installation is done.
 
Regulus67 said:
That machine does not have the T2 chip. So the install process is different.
Can you confirm it will work on a Mac Pro 7,1? Or any intel mac with the T2 chip?
Click to expand...
I'm sorry I'm unable to answer your question since I only have 1 Apple computer [laptop/desktop] which is my MacBook Pro. I'm just sharing what I did but it may not be helpful in all cases, or in other words, YMMV.
 
Regulus67 said:
Personally, I think you did a good job explaining the install process of Windows 11.
I am still using Windows 10, which was so easy to install.
And there is talk of millions of PCs that are still on Windows 10, because of the hardware tpm requirement.
So it's not just a mac problem.

Any well written guide should be welcomed, in my opinion.


I had to do an internet search on this 😆
Click to expand...

Annoyingly when I was upgrading a windows laptop recently, I could no longer find the option in mas to trigger the update bypassing the t2 requirement.

However Rufus allows the creation of an ISO or USB with the requirement removed.
 
I have just installed Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC.
Was a bit of a pain with the drivers, but I pointed the update drivers manually to seek in the old Windows library (from the win 10 installation).
I left the settings at default in Rufus.

The install looks good, and windows is activated. Very minimalistic 🥰 as I used the IOT versions.

Thanks again for the guide @zarf2007
 
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On the back of this I have two Mac Pro. I was looking to sell one but lack of interest means I'll turn one into a dedicated, (almost), Windows machine.
So I want to retain a small Mac OS partition in case I want o do anything Mac on it, (the OS will remain virtually as per a factory install), but what I'm wondering is does anybody have any opinion as to what the smallest usable size is for a Mac partition?
I'll use Bootcamp to install alongside Sequioa, (will never upgrade either to Tahoe), on the built in SSD.
 
I would always recommend to install all the available drivers and updates in Windows 10 before upgrading.

Also, if you want to play games in Windows that use Anticheat, you will run into a bluescreen. That is due to the WiFi card. It can be disabled in device manager.
 
The real downside of all these options seems to be the requirement for Windows to be installed / run from the Apple SSD.

Be very curious to see a guide to how to get things from there, to booting Windows from a PCI SSD.
 
mattspace said:
The real downside of all these options seems to be the requirement for Windows to be installed / run from the Apple SSD.

Be very curious to see a guide to how to get things from there, to booting Windows from a PCI SSD.
Click to expand...
Is it a bad idea to do so? I’m upgrading my Mac Pro to an 8TB Apple SSD very soon, so I’m wondering if I should just split it and put Windows on one partition.
 
realLucaR said:
Is it a bad idea to do so? I’m upgrading my Mac Pro to an 8TB Apple SSD very soon, so I’m wondering if I should just split it and put Windows on one partition.
Click to expand...

Only insofar as it's wear and tear on a proprietary consumable part that will have no sources for replacements.
 
mattspace said:
Only insofar as it's wear and tear on a proprietary consumable part that will have no sources for replacements.
Click to expand...
Flint Ironstag said:
This is my fear as well, and why I disabled secure boot and installed NVMEs & SSDs. Just a basic Tahoe install on the built-in storage, and it never gets used.
Click to expand...
I was doing the same thing a couple of months ago, until I realized a couple of noteworthy things.

1) Apple stopped selling the Intel Mac Pro back in 2023, so less than 3 years ago now (which makes it even worse that Tahoe is the last macOS version, imagine spending 50k in 2023 just to loose support 3 years later). Which means, that Apple is still guaranteed to sell parts up until 2030, parts are always supplied for 7 years after the device was last lost. So if the SSD were to break down within the next 4 (!!) years, you can still get a replacement directly from Apple.

2) The whole SSD module is proprietary, yes, but the NAND chips aren't. So if they were to fail due to wear and tear, you could easily solder new ones on.

3) My Mac Pro now has 8TB modules installed. The 8TB modules should have an endurance rating of about 4,800 TBW to 5,000 TBW, which is typical for high-end workstations such as the Mac Pro.
Now, if we do the math on that, you can write one --Terabyte-- of data every single day for the next 13 years before even hitting that rating. And even then, they are not guaranteed to fail at that exact number.
My SSD currently has 28 TB written, so it will probably outlive me. It is basically brand new, and I rarely write data on it, most of it is files that are not gonna get changed much, so hitting 1TB a day is impossible for me. More like 20GB.

4) You could also just stock up on replacements. I have bought one 256GB module, a couple of 512GB and 1TB kits that are stored dark and cool, so if I ever needed one I would have replacement. I highly suggested that as well, the 256GB modules were often replaced so you can sometimes get them for as low as 50$ on eBay.

I have also recently been in contact with one of the suppliers for Mac Studio SSDs, which are also proprietary, and they told me that they can make an SSD for the Mac Pro as well, although it is probably gonna be costly. Replacing the NAND on the modules is probably the easiest way.

So for me at least, I have moved all my data back on the internal SSD, and I split it in two, 4TB for macOS Tahoe and 4TB for Windows.

Besides, I don't even have space for NVMe SSDs, I have a Promise Pegasus J4i and a Radeon Pro Vega II as well as an Afterburner, so I'm almost full. And I still want to add a Thunderbolt card.

So, there you have it. I would not worry about it at all, and I highly doubt you're gonna use it for 20+ years where that would become even close to being relevant 😄

Oh, but disabling the T2 functions still makes sense, who knows how limiting that will be in the future when you need to diagnose something. I also have SecureBoot settings all turned off.
 
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I'm probably overthinking it, but still... do you have a link to the shop that does capacity upgrades? I would definitely experiment with upgrading a cheapie off ebay.

Thanks for the info.
 
I have a thread about this here

I have Windows on a separate PCIe NVME. I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out the easiest way to install Win11 25H2 and the OP is still the closest. You can do the script method, but I prefer it this way (Win 10 install as usual > Win11 25H2 rufus edition from a usb stick upgrade).
 
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