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Upgrading an early 08 Mac pro.

G

goneeuro

macrumors member
Original poster
May 4, 2009
71
0
I am in a situation to help someone upgrade there Mac pro. It is an early 08. I don't know exactly what to give you guys for details but he wants to run windows 7 64bit. As an OS. So from what I see is the only way to do this is boot camp because he doesn't want to run it in VMware or fusion because he doesn't want to run a virtual machine. He also wants to max out the memory. So I have two main questions.

1. What is the best way to get this machine up to lion? (it's running leopard right now.)

2. How much ram can windows 7 64 see while installed on a Mac pro? (I know the machine has 8 slots, but I read somewhere that windows will only read 8gb. I just wanted to make sure that was true.)

Can you tell I'm not a Mac user yet. Sorry. If your answers generate more questions I will ask more on this thread. If you need any more info on my end let me know. Thanks a lot.
 
you will need to upgrade it to Snow Leopard and update it before Lion can be installed, barring some workaround I'm unaware of.
 
Ok. So it doesn't matter that it's installed on Mac hardware. It's more dependent on which version of windows 7 it is. That's good to know. Thanks. I double check the version of windows and check the wiki. I really appreciate it.
 
unless they already own a machine with Lion on it you will need to get snow leopard first. I went straight from leopard to lion on my mac pro by booting it into target disk mode hooked up to my MBP and then ran the lion recovery tool on the mbp and installed to the mac pro.
 
@OP: Just get the Lion USB stick. Since it's a full installer, there is no need to buy SL first.
 
as above, but make sure you copy the USB installer first before installing, as otherwise you can only use it once.
 
goneeuro said:
I am in a situation to help someone upgrade there Mac pro. It is an early 08. I don't know exactly what to give you guys for details but he wants to run windows 7 64bit. As an OS. So from what I see is the only way to do this is boot camp because he doesn't want to run it in VMware or fusion because he doesn't want to run a virtual machine. He also wants to max out the memory. So I have two main questions.

1. What is the best way to get this machine up to lion? (it's running leopard right now.)

2. How much ram can windows 7 64 see while installed on a Mac pro? (I know the machine has 8 slots, but I read somewhere that windows will only read 8gb. I just wanted to make sure that was true.)

Can you tell I'm not a Mac user yet. Sorry. If your answers generate more questions I will ask more on this thread. If you need any more info on my end let me know. Thanks a lot.
Click to expand...

According to ZDNet, the memory limits of windows 7 depends on which version you're running:
Starter: 8GB
Home Basic: 8GB
Home Premium: 16GB
Professional: 192GB
Enterprise: 192GB
Ultimate: 192GB


The easiest way to install Lion is to use the USB drive for $29.
Technically, Apple's license agreement says you can only upgrade to Lion from Snow Leopard (meaning you have to buy Snow Leopard, too).

But as was said, the Lion installer is a complete installer and will work regardless of what OS you're currently running (assuming hardware is up to spec).

As for installing Windows 7, you can use boot camp.
 
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