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I am trying to install Windows 7 on my Mac pro, I have tried everything it seems. I have a perfectly good Windows 7 DVD which boots on other devices, yet it doesn't on mine. First off it started with spitting out the DVD (which I can understand ;) ), so I thought its my superdrive. I went and bought a new drive today, except this is a SATA drive and tried to boot from there. It load the DVD fast and easy within OSX, but when I reboot and try to boot from the disk it hops to a flashing Apple logo and a deny logo (circle with a diagonal line thru it).

What am I doing wrong? The DVD is legal, its not an illegal copy (however, I tried that as well.. and didn't work either). I googled it a bit but cannot find any similar problem.

With flashing logo's, I mean it flashes every second between these two logos: enter image description here

Edit 1
I have now also tried it using Windows 8, downloaded from Microsoft.

Edit 2
I have now also tried it using an Windows XP Disk. Same problem, flashing icons.

Edit 3
I have now also tried:

  • Removing all drives and installing OSX 10.6 on one of the 1TB drives. Using bootcamp and installing. Same problem
  • Reformatted my 750GB Drive and added MBR support. Formatted as Fat drive. Same problem.
  • Removing all drives and trying to boot from disk. Nothing happens, just a white screen.
  • Reset the PRAM so many times that I guess the computer almost tells me to give it a brake.
  • Tried booting with only C hold down. Same problem.

Nothing seems to help.

Also, I just found this page: http://support.Apple.com/KB/HT2674 According to that page, the problem is:

Circle with Slash - could not load boot.efi, or some other issue

and

Metallic Apple - found boot.efi.

More: http://support.Apple.com/KB/TS1892?viewlocale=en_US

Edit 4
I tried all evening to restore the firmware, but it just refuses. The sleep light flashes a few times, the tone comes, then the normal sound boot sound comes and OSX boot like it should. I am getting crazy here.

Edit 5
Tested as well with both 10.5 and 10.6 retail disks, they load perfectly. (Maybe due to that they have GUID formatted?)

Glorfindel
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Paul Peelen
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1 Answers1

3

The Apple article EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Macs specifies that MacBook Pro 3.1 can only run EFI 1.5.1. (From the article you can also download this EFI version.)

As Windows 7 needs EFI version 2, this means that you cannot boot Windows 7 x64 from the DVD. Some more facts about the EFI problem can be found in Native UEFI Windows 7 Boot on Mac Mini.

You will need to convert the Windows 7 DVD that you have to one that can work on the Mac.

Some resources that may help here are :

Installing Windows 7 x64 on a Mac Pro (Late 2006)
“Select CD-ROM Boot Type :” prompt during Vista, Server 2008 (& R2) & Windows 7 x64 Boot on Macbook

harrymc
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