Yosemite and Windows 7 Bootcamp

[Shappaeye]

Recently got a Mac Pro and went to install Windows 7 via Bootcamp to find it only supports Windows 8 and later.

Anyone found a workaround to get W7 on there instead?

I have been toying with Windows 8 Bootdisk to 'fool' BC into thinking its a Windows 8 install and then when it reboots to start the install swap the disk for a W7 one. Didnt work.

I have also been trying rEFIt and rEFInd with no success.

I even went to the lengths of wiping the drive and going back to Mavericks to find that the Bootcamp Ass still asks for W8!

HELP!

----------

I have been in touch with Apple Support, who hadn't instantly realised this had happened and tried a few things but basically stated that as the Mac Pro clearly states it no longer support W7, there is no 'Apple' solution.

 

[Gjwilly]

I haven't tried it but maybe some variation of this would work.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1836959/

Basically install Windows on a virtual machine, make a new partition, and then clone the virtual Windows over to the new partition.
Worth a shot anyway.

 

[Shappaeye]

Thanks for the suggestion, tried it and it didn't work.

I have also noticed that the Windows 7 Pro DVD doesnt boot, the same DVD booted fine off my newer iMac but not off my Mac Pro.

I tried the DVD in ISO format as well using Rufus to create a bootable USB for UEFI computers. It doesnt boot at all and doesnt give the impression it has anything to offer the boot process as it skips straight to booting the OS.

Have Apple really tried this hard to stop us using Windows 7?

I have also tried Windows 8 and downgrading! Which also didn't work.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[yjchua95]

Thanks for the suggestion, tried it and it didn't work.

I have also noticed that the Windows 7 Pro DVD doesnt boot, the same DVD booted fine off my newer iMac but not off my Mac Pro.

I tried the DVD in ISO format as well using Rufus to create a bootable USB for UEFI computers. It doesnt boot at all and doesnt give the impression it has anything to offer the boot process as it skips straight to booting the OS.

Have Apple really tried this hard to stop us using Windows 7?

I have also tried Windows 8 and downgrading! Which also didn't work.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Windows 7 does not have USB 3 support in any of the official installers from Microsoft.

Besides, the nMP only supports UEFI installations of Windows, which means that Windows 7 is even more out of the question (it doesn't support UEFI well at all).

Windows 7 also no longer receives mainstream support from Microsoft anyway. So just use Windows 8.1. I don't get why people complain about 8.1, it's a nice OS to use and the learning curve isn't steep.

 

[Shappaeye]

Thanks yjchua95 for your reply, understood, thanks for clearing that up although I did suspect something along those lines but didn't have the tech understanding to put a name to it.

 

[HKeleher]

I'm not suggesting this but it may work for you though I'd like to understand more the UEFI piece and how it might impact a scenario as described below.

I used Clonezilla (free) to clone an image of Windows 7 (Enterprise no less which has apparently never been supported) from a Lenovo laptop after running sysprep on it then Winclone ($30) to copy it to Bootcamp. Basically I cloned, booted to the cloned drive, ran sysprep and copied using Winclone. You can find a support document on Winclone's website for details. Note, if you have Bitlocker enabled you'll need to turn it off before copying the image to Bootcamp.

I ran into the lack of USB3 support of course so I copied the Bootcamp drivers to the drive I cloned and did it all again. Once I got the clone on my Bootcamp partition I installed the drivers and everything appears to work fine (except wireless connects but doesn't get an IP so I have to set it manually, not sure why and haven't had time to dig into it yet.)

I don't want to keep this since the sysprep blew my domain config and I would like to install from scratch to make it nice and clean but it sounds like I might not have a choice... or skip Bootcamp and just use Parallels which... I'd rather not unless there's no other choice.

I don't want to use Windows 8 for several reasons but the primary one is my company doesn't support it yet (I'm a consultant and need to use some company tools that only run in Windows.)

 

[saturnotaku]

Windows 7 also no longer receives mainstream support from Microsoft anyway.

Win 7 will continue to receive security updates for several more years, and that's more important than anything else that comes as part of mainstream support.