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Tips on Windows 7 and The Mac Pro (READ BEFORE YOU BUY)

slughead

slughead

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 28, 2004
3,107
237
I have *the first* mac pro (2006). Windows 7 64bit, though still windows, is worth upgrading to from vista or XP, especially if you can get it for cheap.

First off, Windows 7 will apparently install on top of [pirated or not pirated] versions of XP corporate (AKA 'XP Volume'--no activation required). You can therefore install XP corporate, purchase the $30 Win7 upgrade (this is a seriously limited time offer, apparently), format, and you'll be good to go. This is what I did. I ended up paying $30 for windows 7 64.

I'd Recommend Win7 64bit. You're silly not to if you have a mac pro.


M$ now lets you download Windows 7 once you buy it. In order to install windows 7 64 bit, however, you must install from a bootable win7 64bit disk.

In order to get a bootable disk, you need to download the ISO, get a physical copy though the mail ($13 extra), or do what I did and convert the 'setup' folder into an ISO you can burn in Disk Utility (or in windows..

To do that, you must go through these steps (this takes 5 minutes and must be done from within Windows).:
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/...rom-exe-plus-setup1-box-and-setup2-box-files/

Note that the " oscdimg.exe" file is a broken link so you'll have to google the filename. I found it here:
http://www.filestube.com/f04b2ce143ffda3d03ea,g/oscdimg.html



Once booted into windows 7, you may want to install the bootcamp 3.0 64bit drivers. This would be a bad idea, and the installer will stop you from doing it. Bootcamp does not currently support windows 7, and until they do you have to hack to install it (like I did).

My results were bad: I got 2 BSOD because of the AppleHFS.sys driver (allows you to access your HFS+ formatted drives from within windows). Luckily they were spaced far enough apart where I could copy my 13GB backup files from my HFS drives to the NTFS partition (you may not be so lucky). I then went into "add/remove programs" control panel and erased bootcamp. I may have been able to get by with just deleting the AppleHFS.sys driver, but I didn't care to risk it.

However, if you don't want to listen to reason, you can install the bootcamp 3.0 drivers anyway Simply insert the snow leopard dvd, search for 'command', right click on the command prompt, 'open with administrator privileges', and then type

D:
cd "Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple"
msiexec /i BootCamp64.msi​

This will force the installer to run.

Note that d: is the letter of your dvd drive. It may be E:, F:, g, depending on how many drives you have hooked up. The "CD" command should throw a "not found" error if you've got the wrong drive.


After you're done jumping through all these hoops, make sure to MANUALLY run windows update (click 'start' and search for it), and click on the OPTIONAL updates and install those as well. This will probably get your sound and whatnot working. Yes the ethernet driver was included, so I didn't have to mess with that.

I have an 8800 and had to go to NVidia's site to get the most recent driver. You may have to as well.


Currently my windows 7 mac pro is running fine. It runs multiple monitors and games better than XP. It's very VERY fast. I'd recommend it if you have important things to do (like, in my case, video games).

Fanboys aside, this is an excellent OS, and if you can get the $30 upgrade price, it's way more of a step forward than Snow Leopard was over 10.5.
 
don't think i'll be installing w7 bootcamp anytime soon. but kudos for this detailed tutorial.

i'm sure there're users who'll appreciate the step-by-step you painstakingly penned.

hi-5
 
Nice tutorial. One question though. I saw a thread recently talking about AHCI drivers for Windows 7. Does something have to be done in order to get normal disk performance on a Mac Pro?

Thx..
 
smacman said:
Nice tutorial. One question though. I saw a thread recently talking about AHCI drivers for Windows 7. Does something have to be done in order to get normal disk performance on a Mac Pro?

Thx..
Click to expand...

I read that yesterday--someone installed the AHCI drivers in win7. I know with windows XP you had to install all that junk (biggest pain ever), but Windows 7 I'm not so sure. Maybe the guy was confused and thought Win7 had the same problem as XP.


I'm not sure why people are installing those drivers. I was getting 25Mbytes/second transfer speed between drives on a fresh install so if it's "not normal" now, I don't know what is.
 
slughead said:
I read that yesterday--someone installed the AHCI drivers in win7. I know with windows XP you had to install all that junk (biggest pain ever), but Windows 7 I'm not so sure. Maybe the guy was confused and thought Win7 had the same problem as XP.


I'm not sure why people are installing those drivers. I was getting 25Mbytes/second transfer speed between drives on a fresh install so if it's "not normal" now, I don't know what is.
Click to expand...

You mainly need AHCI mode to boot Windows from one of the ODD SATA ports. People use these to save their other ports for more space or mirroring or backup.
 
gugucom said:
You mainly need AHCI mode to boot Windows from one of the ODD SATA ports. People use these to save their other ports for more space or mirroring or backup.
Click to expand...

Makes sense. Probably not worth it for those of us who don't use those ports within windows though, right?
 
Hey, slughead, thanks for the info. Paid for and downloaded my copy of Win7 (I'm actually a student, though :)) and just got it installed a little bit ago. Looks and feels far nicer (and smoother) than XP ever did. Now to just get the extra power cord for my 4890. *laughs*
 
slughead said:
In order to get a bootable disk, you need to download the ISO, get a physical copy though the mail ($13 extra), or do what I did and convert the 'setup' folder into an ISO you can burn in Disk Utility (or in windows..
Click to expand...

You can copy the files in the ISO to a FAT partition and boot off
that. That's what I do. Much faster than installing from a DVD.
You just need to make sure you have a valid volume boot record
for that partition. 'bootsect /nt60 X:' can give you one, where X
is the so-called drive letter. I never install from DVDs these days
as it's much faster to install from the hard drive. E.g., I installed
Snow Leopard in 4 minutes :)

Once booted into windows 7, you may want to install the bootcamp 3.0 64bit drivers. This would be a bad idea, and the installer will stop you from doing it. Bootcamp does not currently support windows 7, and until they do you have to hack to install it (like I did).
Click to expand...

Yep. Bad idea. One hardly needs any Apple drivers as long as one
doesn't mind sacrificing the brightness keys (really necessary with
an external monitor?) and the eject key (eject can be done from
Explorer). This will turn F13-F15 on an aluminum keyboard into the
volume up/down/mute keys:

Code: 
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,05,00,00,00, 20,e0,66,00, 2e,e0,65,00, 30,e0,64,00, 37,e0,6a,00, 00,00,00,00

To use save as a file with a '.reg' extension and double-click on it.
To change the startup volume hold down CTRL when selecting the
OS to boot from. That's it. Mac Pro aside, nothing Apple needed :)

slughead said:
I read that yesterday--someone installed the AHCI drivers in win7. I know with windows XP you had to install all that junk (biggest pain ever), but Windows 7 I'm not so sure.
Click to expand...

AHCI is significantly easier to set up with Windows 7. Windows 7 has
built-in support for AHCI, which XP didn't have. It is just a matter of
setting a registry key to make sure the driver is loaded.

I have an 8800 and had to go to NVidia's site to get the most recent driver. You may have to as well.
Click to expand...

One nice thing about Windows 7 is that you can upgrade the driver
version without rebooting (as long as the WDDM version is the same).
 
Infrared said:
AHCI is significantly easier to set up with Windows 7. Windows 7 has built-in support for AHCI, which XP didn't have. It is just a matter of setting a registry key to make sure the driver is loaded.
Click to expand...

I would caution users on that issue. According to my tests you still need to patch the MBR or your Windows installation may become unusable. I would recommend to set at least a recovery point before activating an AHCI driver in Win7. That way you can recover your installation with legacy driver in case you run into trouble.

Infrared said:
.... changing the "Start" subkey value from 3 to 0
in this key allows the AHCI driver to be loaded on boot:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci

This is a description of what the Start subkey values mean:

[ Quoted From: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/103000 ]
Code: 
Start     REG_DWORD     Start constant
Specifies the starting values for the service as follows:

START TYPE     LOADER     MEANING

0x0            Kernel     Represents a part of the
(Boot)                    driver stack for the boot
                          (startup) volume and must
                          therefore be loaded by the
                          Boot Loader.

0x1            I/O        Represents a driver to be loaded
(System)       subsystem  at Kernel initialization.

0x2            Service    To be loaded or started
(Auto load)    Control    automatically for all startups,
               Manager    regardless of service type.

0x3            Service    Available, regardless of type,
(Load on       Control    but will not be started until
demand)        Manager    the user starts it (for example,
                          by using the Devices icon in
                          Control Panel).

0x4            Service    NOT TO BE STARTED UNDER ANY
(disabled)     Control    CONDITIONS.
               Manager
Click to expand...

This sounds very plausible. IMO the registry patch is usually done by going from 4 -> 0. This is where the method is probably imperfect. I believe by doing so you still get blue screens. At least I used to get them with Vista. Vista isn't so different to Win7.

I could imagine that changing the value from 4 -> 3 would do the trick. It needs some experimentation.
 
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