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MP 1,1-5,1 Is it safe to use Windows on a Classic Mac Pro without botching the bootROM?

Meanwhile, I thought I would make one more post on my Windows 7 experience.

Having got it all working to my satisfaction, I did another SIP disable/Macschrauber's romdump/SIP re-enable and am pleased to report that as everyone promised there was still no occurrence of MS certs. I know that was only exactly as expected but hey, it's nice to be sure.

Incidentally, as well as doing the actual Win7 Boot Camp install, one also has to do an absurdly complicated Microsoft Product Activation performance. You enter the product key, 5x5 characters and try to do online activation. Nope. Opt for telephone activation and the screen produces a string of 9x6 numbers. When you phone the number you get sent a link to a "visual support" page. On that page you have to enter the numbers on the activation screen, then they send you different set of 9x6 numbers that you have to type into the boxes on the activation screen. And that's all there is to it. So that's 133 keystrokes. :rolleyes:

Never mind. It DOES work as a way to get retro games running on a modern-ish GPU in a less-than-modern cMP.

So now I've got Mojave/MXLinux/Win7(High Sierra) choosable on boot screen. In due course I might look into safely installing Windows 10 or 11 in CSM/BIOS mode. I'm a bit off OCLP.
 
tythomas said:
@Manteur
So your Win7 install was via Bootcamp app running on High Sierra with Win 7 DVD?
Click to expand...
Yes. I took out all the other SSD sleds, made a clean install of High Sierra on a blank SSD using a USB install stick made previously using Apple's CreateInstallMedia app, then used Apple's Boot Camp Assistant following the instructions exactly. This involved downloading/making a USB of Apple's Windows drivers, deciding on the partition sizes - I went for 50/50, inserting the authentic Microsoft Win 7 DVD and letting it get on with it. No low-level tinkering on my part at all.
The result was a booting Win 7 with no yellow exclamation marks in Device Manager. However the video adapter was reported as standard VGA (or something like that) so I had to search out and download the AMD Win 7 legacy "Adrenalin" package. This mostly installed properly. The video side went perfectly, but the HMDI audio gave a fault which was remedied by clicking the revert-to-previous option. All was now running smoothly except for the horrible Microsoft product activation described above. That done, it works fine and gives me a platform to run my old games discs on which for me was the whole point.
Hope that helps. Good luck.
 
Manteur said:
Yes. I took out all the other SSD sleds, made a clean install of High Sierra on a blank SSD using a USB install stick made previously using Apple's CreateInstallMedia app, then used Apple's Boot Camp Assistant following the instructions exactly. This involved downloading/making a USB of Apple's Windows drivers, deciding on the partition sizes - I went for 50/50, inserting the authentic Microsoft Win 7 DVD and letting it get on with it. No low-level tinkering on my part at all.
The result was a booting Win 7 with no yellow exclamation marks in Device Manager. However the video adapter was reported as standard VGA (or something like that) so I had to search out and download the AMD Win 7 legacy "Adrenalin" package. This mostly installed properly. The video side went perfectly, but the HMDI audio gave a fault which was remedied by clicking the revert-to-previous option. All was now running smoothly except for the horrible Microsoft product activation described above. That done, it works fine and gives me a platform to run my old games discs on which for me was the whole point.
Hope that helps. Good luck.
Click to expand...
P.S. This was all the 64 bit variety.
 
Manteur said:
P.S. This was all the 64 bit variety.
Click to expand...
I’m trying to track down a DVDR to burn a copy.
Hoping I can bypass the High sierra install as I don’t really need that.
I found an older version of boot camp drivers I could install if I get the Win7 install completed.
 
tythomas said:
Hoping I can bypass the High sierra install as I don’t really need that.
Click to expand...
Funny you should mention that. I'm wondering if I could clone the Win 7 partition to a separate drive using Linux dd, then reclaim the whole drive with the unneeded High Sierra on for something else.
The only other oddity I found was that the keyboard/mouse did NOT work through the USB3 hub in Win 7 but was OK plugged directly into the machine.
 
I found some blank DVD and suppose I'll try this method. I keep getting stuck with Windows Install app upon first boot of the install.
Windows could not update the computer's boot configuration. Installation cannot proceed.
 
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