I know there is an extensive thread on this in the alternate OS forum, but was curious if anyone in this forum is booting Windows 7 without CSM and pure EFI on their Mac Pro? Windows 8 is doing it great, and Fedora 18 worked pretty well as well, but did have a few bugs here and there. So far, Windows 8 installed nearly as simple as OS X in on the Mac Pro. I am slowly starting to like Windows 8 more than I did. So far, no crashes or hangs, and the performance is excellent for everyday tasks and VMware Workstation 9.02.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Anyone booting Windows 7 x64 using EFI
- Thread starter monkeybagel
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Probably Windows 8 might boot pure EFI in Mac Pro. Tried Windows 7 and no luck. I need EFI boot to have Areca RAID card able to work when using it with EFI BIOS, so this will give me ability to boot both OS X and Windows from RAID
So if Windows 8 will boot from EFI then I'm upgrading right away.
I did a couple of Windows 8 installs on my 2010 MP. I don't know why but the last one is an EFI boot. The second I select W8 the screen turns black with the Windows 8 logo. It takes a little while for the desktop to appear but it all seems a little faster than W7 on the same machine.
This seems to be the case when booting EFI as it does not have to prepare the CSM layer to boot the BIOS-based OS bootloader. Although after it gets up and running there is little difference.
A few differences is that the installer is resolution-aware and runs at 2560x1440 on Windows 8, where the Windows 7 installer will run at low resolution. I know that some have successfully installed Windows 7 using EFI on some Macintoshes (it seems mainly the notebooks) and it is probably more trouble than it is worth, but I thought I would see if anyone on here had done this on the Mac Pro specifically.
Is there any one with Areca card here and Windows 8 ? It would be really worth trying to test multi-EFI boot
I had Windows 7 and Windows 8 on my 2009 Mac Pro. This is possible. My boot up time for Windows 8 is about 7 seconds. The thread in the other forum has extensive details. I highly suggest following it, although it has become somewhat stagnated.
I am finally starting to warm up to Windows 8. It has been very stable on the Mac Pro so far even booting EFI. Now I am going to try to install Windows 7 from a WinPE 4.0 EFI DVD and see how far I can get.
Have you been able to customize the EFI boot picker (default Apple one) to read something besides "EFI Boot?" I can using CSM booting, but not so far with EFI. I haven't spend a great deal of time with it though.
Is there any one with Areca card here and Windows 8 ? It would be really worth trying to test multi-EFI boot
not me.
But I am booting Mac OS and Windows 8 off the same disk on an Apricorn Velocity card.
Nox
I have an OWC Accelsior if that counts. Also what I did was I set my .efi binary to be the EFI shell and I kick off a custom compiled grub.efi and chainload all OSes from there.
Did you find much of an advantage of doing this other than the "see if I can" factor? I would really like to get it going if possible but have no valid justification of doing so other than the knowledge.
I am not sure how to test if you run windows on pure EFI, I do know though that I installed windows without using Bootcamp Assistant
I partitioned/resized my Macintosh HD, and then just rebooted and installed Windows on the other partition with USB stick, I do see I have an EFI partition, it's on a Mac Mini, does this mean I am running it on EFI?
I partitioned/resized my Macintosh HD, and then just rebooted and installed Windows on the other partition with USB stick, I do see I have an EFI partition, it's on a Mac Mini, does this mean I am running it on EFI?
The easiest way to tell I believe would be if you see "EFI Boot" on the bootpicker at launch. When Windows 8 installed using EFI (which it does without workarounds or issue) the only way to boot it is using the bootpicker. Startup Disk does not show it as an option. If you select the Windows 8 Partition, it does not work (for me anyhow).
If you see the standard Hard Disk image and "Windows" on the bootpicker, it is probably not using EFI.
Thank you Monkeybagel
I do see Windows in Startupdisk in OS X, also in the boot manager, when I select the windows disk I then get a black screen with OS X, Linux and Windows + a few memory options.
I have to say though I installed bootcamp drivers after a few days, but even before I had the same a s above.
Yes the advantage is that the proper registers to enable VGA mode on the video card are set with startup.nsh and then Grub allows me to boot any OS. I have a quad boot system.
I am having a hard time locating the startup registers in the EFI shell on my 2012 Mac Pro 3.06x2. I can fire off the Windows EFI loader but it just sits there. The images from your post #459 in that thread have expired so I cannot see the examples you posted. I also see many "PCI Bridges" and am unsure which ones to activate.
Nice work on all of your work on this.
Workaround that works
WIN7 on my MP no problems at all.
use a windows box to install the OS
remove drive and transplant it into mac pro
some fiddling around with drivers and a call to MS to (re)activate.
WIN7 on my MP no problems at all.
use a windows box to install the OS
remove drive and transplant it into mac pro
some fiddling around with drivers and a call to MS to (re)activate.
This thread is very old, but since I started it, I guess I can revive it
What generation Mac Pro do you have? I am going to try this very soon, as I would like to have AHCI on all of the SATA ports. From what I can tell with the boot sector modification, it turns on AHCI on HDD port 1 and 2, but not 3 and 4. It seems that EFI will prevent it from dumbing down those ports to IDE emulation...
This thread is very old, but since I started it, I guess I can revive it
What generation Mac Pro do you have? I am going to try this very soon, as I would like to have AHCI on all of the SATA ports. From what I can tell with the boot sector modification, it turns on AHCI on HDD port 1 and 2, but not 3 and 4. It seems that EFI will prevent it from dumbing down those ports to IDE emulation...
Think you have the right to do that as the author
Windows 7 I don't bother fiddling around to get EFI boot working natively, just installed the usual way and patched the mbr via the mac utility johnsock made to enable AHCI. I have all four port sleds available and the two ports on the solo x2 too on my early 2008 3,1. Using intel rst 9.6.1014.
I won't be switching to Windows hate or hate point one lol - very happy with 7x64!
Think you have the right to do that as the author
Windows 7 I don't bother fiddling around to get EFI boot working natively, just installed the usual way and patched the mbr via the mac utility johnsock made to enable AHCI. I have all four port sleds available and the two ports on the solo x2 too on my early 2008 3,1. Using intel rst 9.6.1014.
I won't be switching to Windows hate or hate point one lol - very happy with 7x64!
Are all six ports appearing as SATA ports, or are two of them emulated IDE?
I have all ports populated (1 SSD, three spindles, and two opticals) and sleds three and four are showing IDE with the MBR patched. I wonder if there are other versions of the patch around that enables all 6 SATA on a 2010/2012 machine?
Sled's 1-3 are populated on my 3,1 and all are SATA ports. 4 currently empty. I have one optical connected to the IDE cable which my 3,1 uses by default for optical drive support. Though I do also have the Solo X2 which gives me an additional AHCI controller.
As far as I know, the version of EFI on the Mac Pro does not support Windows 8 EFI boot. The version of EFI is wrong.
Newer Apple machines are starting to ship with what looks to be UEFI compatible EFI, and people are booting Windows 8 with EFI. It's likely the new Mac Pros will support EFI boot for Windows.
Newer Apple machines are starting to ship with what looks to be UEFI compatible EFI, and people are booting Windows 8 with EFI. It's likely the new Mac Pros will support EFI boot for Windows.
Is that because the rest of the world moved on to UEFI, and Apples are still stuck on the older EFI?
Windows 8 installs and runs fine on my Mac Pro using EFI. My Mac Pro is a 5,1 dual processor.
I know this thread is a little old, but I was revisiting this, and was wondering what machine you used to install Windows 7 on before you moved it to the Mac Pro? Did you allow that machine to install Windows 7 in EFI and create the partitions as needed?