Converting a Macbook pro to Windows

I know this is stating the obvious so forgive me, it's something I overlooked when trying to get a PC to run an old version of Win: If you want to run Win7 the laptop and all its components will have to be older than the Win8 release date. Put another way Win7 will only run on hardware which existed at the time, it won't be support hardware which hadn't been invented.

TW

I know this is stating the obvious so forgive me, it's something I overlooked when trying to get a PC to run an old version of Win: If you want to run Win7 the laptop and all its components will have to be older than the Win8 release date. Put another way Win7 will only run on hardware which existed at the time, it won't support hardware which hadn't been invented.

TW

It’s quite an old MacBook. 10 years maybe… Has the “Intel inside” stickers so supposedly Windows compatible.

Tim

You need the drivers for the Apple hardware, which come as part of Boot Camp. Intel Macs are almost PCs but have various differences.

If you don't care whats on it, I'd:

1. Reinstall MacOS (search 'internet recovery' for the instructions), wiping the drive in the process. Install the latest supported version of MacOS.
2. Run the Boot Camp installer and let it install whatever version of Windows it wants. You'll likely need to download the appropriate ISO image from Microsoft (or elsewhere). You can let it shrink MacOS to almost nothing.
3. Upgrade within Windows to a later version if you want that. eg if Boot Camp will install Win 7, you can upgrade to Win 8/8.1 or 10. You might be able to upgrade to 11 if you do the hacks to bypass the checks 11 does.
4. If this doesn't work, try going back to step 1 and installing the version of MacOS it shipped with (a different keypress to start Internet Recovery) and try 2+3 again.

I'm not sure if there's a downloadable set of drivers for the 'have driver disc' when running the Win 7 installer, or if the Win 7 installer will even boot on a base Mac. Something to look into.

Theo

That is not quite the full story... Installing unmolested win 7 on new hardware is more difficult since it does not have the required drivers out of the box to support modern hardware, however drivers for later hardware do exist in many cases, you just need to circumvent the chicken and egg bit about getting it installed enough to allow them to be installed.

The fix for this is to create a "slipstreamed" install CD, that has the additional drivers loaded, so that it can get through the install.

If you don't wont to go the boot camp / parallels option, then installing a free VM hypervisor like Virtual box, will normally let you install windows in that. You will need enough disk space for a full install of windows on top of MacOS.

This is what I do when I get calls from people saying "Could you install <name of employers CRM system> on my home computer so I can do work in the evenings?", and then mention, "oh by the way, I have a mac, does that matter?".

Another option:

Install Linux and Wine.

Wine allows you to run ( at least some) Windows programs.

I’ve used Wine - admittedly not on a Mac but under Linux- to run some programs only available for Windows.

Thanks. It’s my wife’s computer and I don’t normally have anything to do with MacOS so it’s all a bit bewildering to me. We upgraded it with an SSD a number of years back but for the last year or two it’s refused to do any updates/iOS upgrades, possibly just because the hardware is too old.

Base camp failed when we tried it before with a downloaded copy of Windows but maybe a clean install of the MacOS will fix things.

I might just admit defeat and see if I can find a local man to do it all. ;-)

Tim

If it originally had a HDD as it sounds like it does then it would be the Mid 2012, which was the last MBP to take one, or earlier. Apple doesn't support those any more, so there are no further updates from Apple. (OCLP is a third party hack to install later MacOS, which works quite well IMX.)

Did it say anything helpful when it failed?

Or go the virtual machine route as others have suggested - Virtualbox is open source and works reasonably well. VMWare Fusion is a bit nicer to use and free for personal use, although not sure if the latest versions will run on an older MacOS (also Broadcom recently bought VMWare and jacked up the commercial prices massively so lots of users are fleeing; doesn't affect you but handy to know :-)

Theo

IDK. Wasn't there a change to UEFI from OF (OpenFirmware, Forth language) for part of the boot sequence ? I find here, there was an orbit of EFI/UEFI, roughly when it was showing up on the PC side. Part of that might overlap with the Intel era.

The search engines will NOT allow me to ask what OS media will boot on a MacBook Pro. The religion of the Mac, coerces the question so every answer becomes "so you could install the MacOS on that pig". In other words, when you even attempt to ask a question of the party trick variety, like what happens if you try to boot the machine off the BeeGees Greatest Hits, the answer is always "to boot your MacOS install media, perform ritual sacrifice, then insert your Applw-branded media". Even the AI on my machine, could feel the subtle "reality distortion field" and would not answer the question in the spirit of its crafting. The AI gave me a recipe for booting a MacOS installer DVD.

It's obvious then, that no known human, has ever played the Beegees Greatest Hits, into the UEFI boot loader.

Well, I have done kinky things like this. I booted my PowerPC version of Ubuntu, on my Mac G4 Quad Nostril with PowerPC processor on board. The last one made did not work, but the second last one worked OK and I used to use that for "maintenance" activity on the disk drive inside. But this experience is totally irrelevant to this thread. The epoch problem is the problem. The subtle combination of changing processor families and changing boot processes, gives a number of possible situations the device might embrace.

In this example, a graphics issue could be causes by a UEFI wanting a pure GOP VBIOX on the video card (or iGPU). Apparently, the GOP VBIOS are supposed to be hybrids, supporting both modes, but the problem can be the motherboard recognizing the device improperly and the wrong mode being picked up (assumption of support which is not evident).

You might see two screen behaviors. In a legacy boot, the graphics are in legacy mode, a flat flashing cursor is in the exact upper-left of the

Whereas in EFI boot, text printed to the screen, is offset from the upper left corner. Even if no text was printed, there might be enough graphic activity to hint that EFI was using the GOP option (GOP side of a GOP Hybrid VBIOS).

Not every disaster on computers, can be fixed with a slipstream. The recent evolution of computers, was intended to break things, and it is working as intended. This does not mean "we're doomed", but we will need out big boy pants to get any decent project done. They want all the customers to have their IT Certs :-)

And this is why I started by asking the question, if there was a list of known things that 'Just booted" on a Macbook Pro. and all the answers consisted of "purifying yourself with 16oz of Apple Holy Water". No, I did not ask for the religious zealot version of an answer.

Paul

That sounds about right.

Hmm, OCPL looks interesting but possibly a step too complicated for me. My enthusiasm for fighting with computer operating systems died many years ago when I discovered that I can do 99% of what I want to do on my phone or iPad.

Can’t honestly remember. It was a while ago.

A refurbished Windows laptop might be the simplest option for me. ;-). The thing is, the MacBook Pro is a nice chunky solid machine that is quite aesthetically pleasing compared to a cheap plastic generic Windows laptop and it seems a shame not to restore it to some usefulness.

I think I’ll have a go at restoring to OS back to original and then look into the options you’ve mentioned.

Thanks again.

Tim

Install Linux Mint.

Macbooks are well built but overpriced and proprietary.

They run beautifully on Linux.

You can run wine or a virtualbox for any Windows s*it

AFAIAA OpenFirmware was for PowerPC, while EFI was for Intel. I don't think Apple used OF on Intel.

There's some sketchiness around booting 64 bit OSes on 32 bit EFI, but if we're going back to the earliest Intel Macs from Early 2006 they didn't support 64 bit anyway (only Merom from Late 2006 onwards).

I think after 2008 it should be possible to boot UEFI-compatible OS media, but if it doesn't have drivers you may find it hard to make progress.

Linux kernels tend to have basic driver support built in, so you can boot installers without troubles. If you're in the 32/64 bit crossover time then

Windows historically has been annoying to boot at the best of times (eg couldn't just block-write the .iso to a USB stick, need to go via the Media Creation Tool; Win10 is better at this) so it's more likely to have issues.

Theo

OCLP isn't really hard - if you can follow a Windows installer you can follow it. The main thing to remember is that once MacOS is installed there's a final step to install the 'patches'. If you don't do that it'll work but run like a dog.

It's also worth stepping back from the bleeding edge one version or so, as more stuff has been sorted out. The older the machine is (I mean pre 2010) the bumpier the experience on modern MacOS is.

IMX Apple hardware tends to outlast Dell and Lenovo business hardware, and certainly better than consumer grade plastic. So it's well worth keeping going.

(the early 2010s is probably one of the high spots for Apple hardware - upgradeable parts, good selection of ports, no braindead decisions about butterfly keyboards or soldered SSDs to save 0.001mm thickness)

If you get stuck and/or give up, give us a shout, there might be something more that can be done.

Theo

You can use rufus.ie web site and their tool, for a fair number of Windows ISO files. It uses syslinux for booting, and it will download a later syslinux version for you, for the cases where that is needed.

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Apps\Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool README Windows7-USB-DVD-Download-Tool.exe

Name: Windows7-USB-DVD-Download-Tool.exe <=== this is the file in that folder (name is different than the installer) Size: 477,048 bytes (465 KiB) SHA1: 6B6ECD554C96ABA07CDFE08EA47541E485A8E9E3

I hardly every use MediaCreationTool out of necessity. Now that the size of the ISOs is so big and needs dual layer DVDs for example, it no longer matters whether you use the Linux download method or you use MediaCreationTool on a modern Windows equipped machine. Simply go to the download page, from either WinXP (?) or Linux, and you will be given a direct download link. The URL of such a link is valid for 24 hours. If the server were to create a fuss (by running at 100KB/sec), you can use "aria2c" or similar multi-thread downloaders to accelerate the download process. As long as the single connection case runs at a good speed, you don't need that.

There seems to be a stubborn insistance by the Applodians, that the MBP mid 2012 is (BIOS,MSDOS-partition). Apparently only the Retina version is UEFI, and who would want a fresh-baked UEFI anyway. UEFI might be more broken-ness than it is worth. Maybe it s a good thing the model is MacBookPro9,3 (13") or MacBookPro9,1 (15"). Ivy Bridge.

Windows has drivers like "MSAHCI" which works with a lot of machine which are using AHCI mode with tagged queuing for their disk interface. Windows can be booted with only a disk driver, as the GPU can be run in frame buffer mode ("Basic Display Adapter"), a 1024x768 VESA mode. The NIC might not work. The USB in W10 supports USB3 XHCI drivers, and the OHCI/EHCI or the like would also be in there. While Intel pretends to have the USB drivers, the drivers really call "USBPORT.inf" and the Microsoft materials then finish the job.

For this particular project, the number of partitions the MacOS uses is part of the challenge. Legacy MSDOS partitioning supports for this purpose.

Three primary partitions (the "Boot" partition of Windows would be one of these) Extended partition (a "container" for the logical partitions) Logical partitions, a large number of them if you like.

Multiple copies of windows can be put on such disks. The first Windows, at least the thing labeled "Boot" has to be a primary, and that might well be C: itself. Any additional OSes for Windows, can go into a logical, as the logicals are chain-booted from the windows menu. That is not a particular factor for our little project. We only need to get one Windows on this machine.

windows, if you are in a pinch, does not need a System Reserved, so it is also possible to offer Windows a single primary, and it will obediently install in there, and not whine to you about not getting to make a System Reserved. For example, if some Apple resource needed to be moved to a logical and it would tolerate that, you may be able to free up a single Primary for the Windows project.

I don't remember any details for Disk First Aid, and I also cannot recommend "gparted" and a Linux DVD for maintenance on the Mac, as on my Mac G4, gparted destroyed the partition table. But I had a backup made ten minutes before, so I did not particularly lose any hair.

This will tell you about the disk drive. Text output.

"So far it has been compiled on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X/Darwin, BeOS, QNX, Solaris, HP/UX, and Cygwin"

On Windows, I use the Cygwin version, since there is no Windows build. Cygwin utilities can be portable, as long as their important DLLs are in the same folder. That's how I have it packaged here. Portable folder for Windows usage.

On a Mac, you'd be running that in Terminal. and it will likely need elevation (don't remember details). After the MacOS is installed, using Terminal and a copy of that, would give the details on the hard drive and how many partitions are occupied.

Paul

Just tried this today.

Everything was going fine until I had to select the drive for installation. (As I mentioned before it has an SSD now).

Now it pops up with the error message “This volume is not formatted as APFS” and it doesn’t offer any option to reformat it.

Any suggestions?

Tim

Install linux?

And forget non standard AppleCrap™

Or find a way to format the SSD - plug it into a computer running AppleCrap™ and format it.

That's fixable. Boot into the installer again. When it pops up its welcome splash thingy, look for the menus at the top of the screen. Go to "Utilities -> Disk Utility"

In DU, select the physical disc (not one of the partitions underneath it). Say you want to Erase, selecting GUID (aka GPT) and 'APFS' (not case-sensitive or encrypted). Let it run.

Then the installer should find it.

Video of the process:

Of course it does.

Yes. Ignore TNP's bollocks and follow Theo's post. Apple's installers always give you useful utilities such as Terminal and Disk Utility.