Windows ONLY on an old Mac Pro

[sdwaltz]

Hi all,

I'l probably get flamed for this, but was curious if this was possible.

I'd like to turn my old Mac Pro 5,1 into a Windows 11-only machine, i.e., no MacOS on it at all.

I made the mistake of making a Windows 11 installer USB, booting from it, wiping the drives, and attempting to install Windows...but I've run into all sorts of errors and can't even get it off the ground...and now they're no MacOS. Luckily I have plenty of other hardware and can get El Cap back onto it without too much trouble but I was hoping I could just get Windows on it directly without having to deal with all of that.

And no, it's not the TPM/Secure Boot issue...I did all the appropriate bypasses in the registry prior to install.

Has anyone had luck with this? If not with Windows 11, can it be done with Windows 10? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[uller6]

Hi all,

I'l probably get flamed for this, but was curious if this was possible.

I'd like to turn my old Mac Pro 5,1 into a Windows 11-only machine, i.e., no MacOS on it at all.

I made the mistake of making a Windows 11 installer USB, booting from it, wiping the drives, and attempting to install Windows...but I've run into all sorts of errors and can't even get it off the ground...and now they're no MacOS. Luckily I have plenty of other hardware and can get El Cap back onto it without too much trouble but I was hoping I could just get Windows on it directly without having to deal with all of that.

And no, it's not the TPM/Secure Boot issue...I did all the appropriate bypasses in the registry prior to install.

Has anyone had luck with this? If not with Windows 11, can it be done with Windows 10? Any help would be appreciated.

I had my old Mac Pro 3,1 running windows 7 on a dedicated drive for a couple years. It worked great (with bootcamp drivers installed too!). I also have a 2012 Mac mini running windows 10 only. It works fine as well.

I think windows 11 probably doesn't have the correct drivers for the old 5,1 hardware. Your machine is 10 years old, and I think windows 11 only has drivers for CPUs from the last ~5 years. I think you might have a lot more success with windows 10.

 

[sdwaltz]

I had my old Mac Pro 3,1 running windows 7 on a dedicated drive for a couple years. It worked great (with bootcamp drivers installed too!). I also have a 2012 Mac mini running windows 10 only. It works fine as well.

I think windows 11 probably doesn't have the correct drivers for the old 5,1 hardware. Your machine is 10 years old, and I think windows 11 only has drivers for CPUs from the last ~5 years. I think you might have a lot more success with windows 10.

Thank you for the info.

Did you install it on your Mac Mini like you would any typical Windows machine, as in, did you just wipe the drive and do a fresh install of W10, or did you have to do anything special?

 

[uller6]

Thank you for the info.

Did you install it on your Mac Mini like you would any typical Windows machine, as in, did you just wipe the drive and do a fresh install of W10, or did you have to do anything special?

I wiped the drive and used a vanilla windows 10 USB drive to install windows, then used another USB drive to install the bootcamp drivers.

 

[Joeronzk]

Go with Windows 10 or Windows 7 instead of Windows 11, which needs TPM and Secure Boot.