I purchased a used 2009 quad core 8 gb Mac Pro which came without cd's or dvd's and the drive was dead. I've installed a new drive and have original windows cd's for installation. My background in hardware is more pc based than mac so I thought I wouldn't have dual operating systems on it, just go native windows. Would like to start fresh and load firmware and any other software at the board level to ensure compatibility but don't currently have the knowledge to do so. Found this great MacRumours site and hoped someone might offer help laying out the procedural steps needed to do this. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.
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2009 Mac Pro and Windows
- Thread starter jesse1d
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Please refer to this table for downloading the appropriate Boot Camp software. Follow the instructions carefully, and you won't have any problems. I do want to let you know that you may very well love OS X. Mavericks is free, and if you want a disk, Snow Leopard is only $20.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634
So is it a requirement to have a mac os installed to load firmware to the board level and any bios type software and then install windows over the mac os. I'm not looking for a dual boot system where one can run mac or windows depending on bootup selection. I would just like to know how to run windows without any emulation or any unnecessary code as if it were just a really well appointed pc.
Pop in your compatible Windows disk. See that chart to see what your Mac is capable of running. Hold C and it will start it up via the disk. Format the drive and complete Windows Setup. Now use the Boot Camp files I sent earlier to install Boot Camp utilities in Windows. This will take care of all the drivers and software. Done! Even being a Mac, it makes for an easier Windows install.
Thanks Altmose for your help, now I can see what needs to be done
Before you can load the WIndows DVD, the optical drive tray needs to be opened.
How would you open the DVD drive tray with no OS installed?
Is your only option holding the mouse button down at startup?
Then you'd have to power it off and power on again to get the door closed.
And would the Mac automatically boot the Windows install DVD if it's the only bootable thing it can find?
Huh? The eject button on the keyboard opens the drive regardless of whether there is an operating system.
If you want SATA 2 speeds and all 4 sleds accessible in windows you will have to install Win 7 via the EFI option. There is a huge thread on the bootcamp section of this site a wealth of info, it will take a while to go through but you will soak up all your need if you are starting booting windows off a mac.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/696523/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/696523/
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Not sure I'm any closer to a native windows 7 x64 install after reading and that info. I can't seem to get a clear picture of the steps required to do this as so many conflicting statements about compatibility etc lead to much confusion over something which I had heard a intel based mac could easily accomplish.
Using one unformated hard drive and a 2009 mac pro I would like to load wi dows 7 x64 and do so without bios emulations etc. No mac os or boot camp just a clean install as if it were a non mac pc. Are there any steps to do this as if one had just built the computer from parts and now want to properly stage it making sure all peripheral drivers are loaded for video, key, mouse, dvd drives etc.
Using one unformated hard drive and a 2009 mac pro I would like to load wi dows 7 x64 and do so without bios emulations etc. No mac os or boot camp just a clean install as if it were a non mac pc. Are there any steps to do this as if one had just built the computer from parts and now want to properly stage it making sure all peripheral drivers are loaded for video, key, mouse, dvd drives etc.
I really doubt that you could achieve what you mentioned with an outdated 2009 Mac Pro and equally outdated Win 7. At least no one ever reported success with that combination as far as I know. But you could have an EFI install of Win 8/8.1 on your 2009 MP after updating the EFI Boot ROM to 5,1 as explained in this post. You may need to read some of my earlier posts in the same thread to better understand how to do it if you are still interested. You need to understand that your MP is still a Mac in its ROM and expects an OS X default startup drive, so your first boot requires pressing the alt/option key after the chime in order to see the Windows or EFI Boot icon in the boot menu assuming you have a Win 8 installer DVD in place.
Edit: Just realized that in order to update the EFI Boot ROM from 4,1 to 5,1, you still need to install OS X first. So unless you want to go through all the trouble, you could probably forget about EFI install of Windows, and Boot Camp install of Windows also requires a start from OS X installation.
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Apple designed the Macs to run Windows as the first and foremost operating system. I haven't had any issues loading Windows, but I also do not own a Mac Pro. I had simply done that through an old MacBook in the XP days of Boot Camp. I just wiped the whole drive and was done with it, but I suppose it is different on one of those.
Easy.
- Just insert a HD to a drive bay. (I usually remove all other drives when installing)
- Start your mac with a bootable DVD/CD with the WIN you prefer.
- Boot from DVD/CD.
- Format the drive if needed.
- Install Win. on the drive.
- DL the bootcamp driver pack from Apple. Install. (This is just drivers for the gfx card, network card, keyboard etc.)
Done.
- Just insert a HD to a drive bay. (I usually remove all other drives when installing)
- Start your mac with a bootable DVD/CD with the WIN you prefer.
- Boot from DVD/CD.
- Format the drive if needed.
- Install Win. on the drive.
- DL the bootcamp driver pack from Apple. Install. (This is just drivers for the gfx card, network card, keyboard etc.)
Done.
Indeed a can of apples infested with worms is how I'd describe it! I would not go pure windows boot on it to start off with, install a copy of OSX 10.6 plus the combo 10.6.8 update on a separate HDD or small SSD, purchase mavericks from the App Store (which appears on 10.6.8) for free and make a bootable usb installer of mavericks using diskmakerx for a clean install of 10.9 back onto the OSX drive. Use another SSD for your bootcamp Windows setup.
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Drifter is right in that you do not need OS X installed at all. You can pop the disk in, hold C at boot, and format and install on the hard drive Windows. Then once setup is done download the version of Boot Camp appropriate for what ever you are running and install it. Drivers are then taken care of and you now have a Mac Pro running Windows. It would also be good to run OS X to get a feel of what the true Mac experience is all about though!
The mac keyboard which came with this mac pro is busted, I have a usb pc keyboard but obviously it hasn't the special mac keys on it. is it still possible to load the os with it, would there be keyboard equivalents for eject, etc or do I need the mac keyboard?
Most PC USB keyboards will work if it doesn't on the few occasions it will say so on boot. Command key = windows flag and option is left ALT key which I think is all you need!
Eject you can get away with right clicking the disk icon to eject in Explorer. Nice and convenient to have a Mac keyboard though.
Eject you can get away with right clicking the disk icon to eject in Explorer. Nice and convenient to have a Mac keyboard though.
You don't really need a Mac keyboard for eject function, the F12 key is equivalent to the eject key for Mac. Read the following quote from one of the posts in this link:
There are also other shortcuts to eject/open DVD drive, such as Command + E, right click on mouse while starting up. You may want to try all to see which works for you, but I tried the approach mentioned in the above quote and it worked fine for me.jnmaloof said:
Edit: No offense intended but you seemed to pick your MP from a junk yard based on your description of many busted parts. So a bigger question is how you know that the optical drive or the whole system actually works? guess you'll find out eventually.
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The other way to eject discs in the OS is the classic way of dragging it into the trash.
Old timers will remember the world of hurt you would run into if you just 'ejected' a disc with the drive button without trashing it in OS9 and earlier.
Old timers will remember the world of hurt you would run into if you just 'ejected' a disc with the drive button without trashing it in OS9 and earlier.
I never knew about this. I did read up on this and found that the 'eject' button goes live once the Apple EFI boot menu is invoked (with the 'option' key).
What happens when you load the Windows installation DVD and close the tray? Will the startup manager detect it and draw an icon for it in the menu straight away?
I'd test this myself, but I am not using an Apple graphics card any longer.
Yes, the Windows and EFI Boot icons would appear after reading a Win 7 installer disc. Even if you remove all boot devices, holding option key while starting up would still show the boot menu with a gray screen. The only way to recognize that you are in the boot menu is when the mouse pointer appears. This is one of the occasions when an EFI video card is required.