MP 6,1 Win 11 vmWare fusion 13 on MacPro6,1?

[adam9c1]

Can Mac Pro 6,1 trash can running macOS Monterey run Windows 11 Pro using vmWare Fusion 13?

 

[Ludacrisvp]

Not directly. The cpu in the Mac is not supported officially by win 11

 

[sfalatko]

Can Mac Pro 6,1 trash can running macOS Monterey run Windows 11 Pro using vmWare Fusion 13?

I am not sure - it depends on whether the processor in the 6,1 can run VMWare Fusion 13. Fusion 12.1+ does not work on the cMP5,1 (outside of Catalina) due to unsupported CPU features as Fusion 12.1+ uses Apple's hypervisor not a kext.

You can try and run VMWare Fusion Player (it is free). If it runs then you can run Windows 11 as a VM - fully supported by VMWare Fusion.

 

[tanoanian]

Fusion 13 works just fine with windows 11 on the 6,1. I'm running it right now. You have to use the TPM and secure boot workaround since there is no TPM module but the CPU IS supported. 🙄 (insert more eye rolls)

 

[jameslmoser]

Fusion 13 works just fine with windows 11 on the 6,1. I'm running it right now. You have to use the TPM and secure boot workaround since there is no TPM module but the CPU IS supported. 🙄 (insert more eye rolls)

Fusion 13 has the virtual TPM module. I'm using it to run Win 11, though I'm using it on ARM. You need the workaround yet?

 

[tanoanian]

I'm still using my 6,1 as my daily driver. That's cool that fusion includes the TPM module. I'm booting into windows 11 on my mac rather than using the virtual machine. The drivers are pretty good and everything works. I think it runs windows 11 better than it runs macOS at this point.

 

[adam9c1]

Late here to reply.

I was able to install Win 11 Pro with Fusion player.
Want to start tinkering a little with that OS to learn.

Thanks!

 

[Ludacrisvp]

To be clear @tanoanian -- The 6,1 uses an Ivy Bridge processor, you'll see that this isn't listed on the supported processor page. Even Broadwell xeons which are 2 revisions newer are not supported. Only select "high end" Skylake-X CPUs are supported. I have windows 11 running on a ESXi host that uses a Broadwell xeon (E5-2680 v4) and win11 complains that the CPU is not supported even though it has TPM 2.0, which required needing to bypass via registry change to allow win11 22H2 installation.

Windows processor requirements Windows 11 supported Intel processors

This specification details the Intel processors that can be used with Windows 11 customer systems that include Windows products, including custom images.

learn.microsoft.com

Now does it work? Sure it does as long as you have the appropriate bypasses in place.