MP 7,1 Installing Windows 11 Pro on Mac 7,1 for those of us who have just grabbed one at a bargain price!

[zarf2007]

Ok, so after many searches I see lots of threads which are quite old and after experiencing the PITA of trying to get Windows 11 Pro installed onto the apple internal nvme drive in a 7,1 I bagged at a bargain price, I thought I would produce this quick guide to help others:

1) If you have any other usb storage or PCIe storage cards connected (such as sonnet etc) remove them prior to doing this or bootcamp will fail!

2) Download the most recent Windows 10 ISO (I know we are going to install Windows 11 but trust me) from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10iso

3) Start the Bootcamp app from utilities and partition your internal apple SSD (I had a 2TB drive so did roughly 1TB/1TB Mac/windows).

4) Select the Windows 10 ISO that you downloaded from the bootcamp app as a source (no need to prep a usb stick yet).

5) Bootcamp will go away and download all drivers then reboot and take you through the process of
installing Windows 10 (Select Win 10 Pro when prompted to choose windows version)

6) When Windows 10 Pro has installed (doesn't need to be licensed yet), you will be prompted to install
the bootcamp drivers through its wizard, go ahead and complete that.

7) Download the latest Windows 11 Pro ISO from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 and Rufus from here: https://rufus.ie/en/

8) Run Rufus and make sure the (bypass TPM) option is selected and select the Win 11 Pro ISO that
you downloaded.

9) Connect your (at least 8Gb) USB stick to the mac and write the modified windows 11 pro image using Rufus.

10) Make sure the Win 11 Pro USB stick is mounted under windows 10 and run the setup.exe, it will then
upgrade your mac pro 7,1 to Windows 11 Pro.

11) Buy an license key and activate Windows 11 Pro

12) Install any PCIe storage cards back into the Mac Pro.

I also found downloading the AMD drivers for my 6900XT improved things massively under gaming, I downloaded the main detection software from AMD and just installed the driver only.

If you have sonnet PCIe based storage grab the windows drivers from their site.

NB: This is for installing on the internal apple disk only for the purpose of dual booting MacOS and Windows 11 Pro, and also requires no changes to the boot security setting.

I updated to the latest version of MacOS (currently 15.6) before performing this.

hope this helps!

 

[Tony Danger]

You don’t need any of this massive list here.

1: Install Windows 10 with Bootcamp
2: In W10, Run Microsoft Activation Scripts
3: Trigger the Windows 11 upgrade in MAS


Done. Easy peasy.

 

[zarf2007]

You don’t need any of this massive list here.

1: Install Windows 10 with Bootcamp
2: In W10, Run Microsoft Activation Scripts
3: Trigger the Windows 11 upgrade in MAS


Done. Easy peasy.

Ok but the bit about uninstalling pcie storage cards is important or bootcamp fails.

 

[Regulus67]

Ok, so after many searches I see lots of threads which are quite old and after experiencing the PITA of trying to get Windows 11 Pro installed onto the apple internal nvme drive in a 7,1 I bagged at a bargain price, I thought I would produce this quick guide to help others:
...

Personally, I think you did a good job explaining the install process of Windows 11.
I am still using Windows 10, which was so easy to install.
And there is talk of millions of PCs that are still on Windows 10, because of the hardware tpm requirement.
So it's not just a mac problem.

Any well written guide should be welcomed, in my opinion.

...
3: Trigger the Windows 11 upgrade in MAS
...

I had to do an internet search on this 😆

 

[winxmac]

If I'm doing this with a clean install of both macOS and Windows, I would partition using macOS Disk Utility then erase the other partition as MS-DOS [FAT].

Instead of using the Boot Camp Assistant, I would use Brigadier to download the drivers for use in Windows, although the utility has not been updated for almost 3 years now. It's what I used to download the drivers for use in my 15" MacBook Pro 2015 when I tried installing Windows 8.x and Windows 10 although I have not tried installing Windows 11 yet.

Now as for bypassing the system checks to install Windows 11, I would download the iOT LTSC release of Windows 11 since it does not have those checks enabled. Just like what is said by @Tony Danger use Microsoft Activation Scripts once installation is done.

 

[Regulus67]

... 15" MacBook Pro 2015 ...

That machine does not have the T2 chip. So the install process is different.
Can you confirm it will work on a Mac Pro 7,1? Or any intel mac with the T2 chip?

 

[winxmac]

That machine does not have the T2 chip. So the install process is different.
Can you confirm it will work on a Mac Pro 7,1? Or any intel mac with the T2 chip?

I'm sorry I'm unable to answer your question since I only have 1 Apple computer [laptop/desktop] which is my MacBook Pro. I'm just sharing what I did but it may not be helpful in all cases, or in other words, YMMV.

 

[Tony Danger]

Ok but the bit about uninstalling pcie storage cards is important or bootcamp fails.

Ah fair point, I didn’t have any installed on mine.

 

[Tony Danger]

Personally, I think you did a good job explaining the install process of Windows 11.
I am still using Windows 10, which was so easy to install.
And there is talk of millions of PCs that are still on Windows 10, because of the hardware tpm requirement.
So it's not just a mac problem.

Any well written guide should be welcomed, in my opinion.


I had to do an internet search on this 😆

Annoyingly when I was upgrading a windows laptop recently, I could no longer find the option in mas to trigger the update bypassing the t2 requirement.

However Rufus allows the creation of an ISO or USB with the requirement removed.