projectRelentless

Q: How to install Windows 8 on Mid 09 Macbook Pro (10.8.3)

So i loved the new Windows 8, and even had it installed before bootcamp supported windows 8 on my new iMac, i waited to buy a bigger hard drive and more ram for my mid 09 Macbook Pro.  The day i bought the new hardware, Apple released 10.8.3, and an updated bootcamp to support Windows 8!  Yay!  I got my install disc out (iso file burned to DVD), opened up bootcamp assistant, only to get an error saying apple dropped support for my mid 09 Macbook Pro and Windows 8.  Making the install impossible through bootcamp.  Do not fret, i have the solution, and EVERYTHING works perfectly.  Here we go.

 

  • Gather your Windows 8 install disc AND a Windows 7 install disc (you can surely find one by searching the net, use your old one, or borrow a colleagues... we are licensing Windows 8, NOT 7, this is just for my trick to fool bootcamp assistant and no i do not condone piracy)
  • Inside BootCamp Assistant, the driver download may hang,it did for me, twice..could be heavy usage due to the popular new update...so i recommend downloading it faster, and manually here http://support.apple.com/downloads/#macoscomponents  and get 4.1.4586  yes this is for windows 7, ALSO while you are there, download the windows 8 support pack 5.0.5033, as we will need that later as well.  As a matter of fact, DO IT THIS WAY and dont bother
  • That being said and done, in BootCamp Assistant (OSX), only check off Install Windows 7, leaving the download support software unchecked
  • Partition your hard drive as youd like, this splits up your storage space however you like, keep in mind which OS you plan to run the most, and obviously give that one more room, i.e you do all your Photoshop work, and app development in OSX, and only use Windows for office stuff, you'd want to give yourself more room on the OSX side.  I however bought a huge new internal drive to split them basically in half, as i use them both frequently.
  • This step is where the trick comes.  OSX 10.8.3 / BootCamp will advise you there is no support for Windows 8..only 7 with your Mid 09 Macbook Pro if you have put your Windows 8 disc in, upsetting you as it did me...possibly bringing you to this post, thats not FAIR is it?  Your 09 MacBook Pro is still JUST AS GOOD as a lot of PC's running Windows 8, why they excluded this model i have no idea...im sure they had reasons, but i dont care at the moment..lol
  • INSTEAD place a Windows 7 install disc in, and click next.  BootCamp Assistant will now partition your drive, make the windows side bootable and restart your  MBP.
  • Let it do its thing, and eventually you will land at the Windows 7 installation interface.  We don't really want that, we want Windows 8 right? 
  • Click the "x" to close the installation for Windows 7, it threatens your MBP will restart, and allow it to do so.
  • **IMPORTANT**  Once you hear the beloved Mac chime, quickly press and hold the "option" key.
  • This brings you to an area where you can select a startup disk.  At this point, lets get rid of the trick.  Hit your eject button and get rid of the Windows 7 install disc, we are done with it now.
  • You now, well in my case anyway, should only see your Mac HD, and the Recovery Disk. 
  • Insert your Windows 8 install disc
  • Now WAIT.  Eventually, you should see a new DVD looking icon that says Windows pop up next to the MacHD and Recovery Disk.  (depending on what you called your iso, it may something else...not sure, but you cant miss the new entry)
  • This is where a wired mouse will be needed, or use tab/space/enter to navigate to the new Windows Disc icon and launch it.
  • You are now in Windows 8's installation interface, cool!
  • Follow the steps until it asks you where you want to install it.  You should see a partition about equal to what you set earlier in BootCamp Assistant, and it SHOULD say Bootcamp right on it.  Select this partition.  (mine was the last one, the fourth i believe)
  • OH NO, it says you cant install it to that partition, this is normal.  You need to highlight/select this partition, and click format.  I cant remember, but i think you have to click "options" to get to a the spot where you can format it.  Pretty straight forward.  Safety check, obviously make sure you have the Bootcamp partition selected, dont format your Mac OSX partition!
  • After the quick format is done, Windows 8 installer will then allow you to click "next" and from there the magic happens.
  • Go through the whole Windows 8 install, and setup how you would like, this takes awhile, and im not covering that, as its a hand in hand walkthrough like any other install.
  • Once your inside your new Windows 8, you'll see a bunch of things not working, like tap to click on your trackpad, no on screen displays for brigtness, volume, and possibly other stuff.  Not cool right? 
  • Grab your USB stick, or Burnt disc that you applied the bootcamp support downloads to in the begining of this tutorial.
  • FIRST open the Windows 7 Bootcamp install, 4.1.4586, open the folder and find setup.exe and run it (we are in windows 8 now)
  • It takes a while, but Apple's BootCamp will install a bunch of drivers, etc, and eventually restart your MBP, which is cool, let it do it.
  • Upon finishing, lets go back to the USB/Burnt Disc where all your support software was saved, and lets get the newly support BootCamp 5.0.5033 opened up.
  • Big Thanks to a post by ErikVanD i seen on this forum for the next step.
  • If you want, try and click setup in this latest BootCamp support set, and you will get another sad error claiming x64 is not supported, something awful to that nature.  Awww man, this far, only to get let down.  Nope.  We are going to fix that.  And this is where ErikVanD's post pointed me to what we do next.
  • It was said to navigate in the BootCamp 5.0.5033 folder to something of the effect of BootCamp/Drivers/Apple and run the MSI file "BootCamp"  (MSI file will say Windows Installer in its description, and not necessarily MSI for anyone not too savy with Windows) **note - NOT .bootcamp (notice the period in the front) and it should work and install the new Windows 8 support for your MBP...but in my case it didn't, which is why im posting how i fixed this.  Your setup may somehow be different, but mine gave me an error say it "needs elevated permissions to run, use setup.exe instead.  We tried that remember!  And it gave us the x64 not supported error.  Oh man!  Blabbing aside, this file needs to be ran as an administrator, which yeah your the only user, but Windows is funny like that.  Normally youd just right click, and select run as administrator, but out the box, that option isnt there when you right click, only install, repair, open with etc.  Here's the next trick, you need to add a registry file to enable running as an administrator, dont be afraid, this is an old trick, and really easy. 
  • Open notepad in Windows, and create a new doc, call it Add_MSI_run_as_administrator.reg
  • Paste this following code into the new doc
  • Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 
    HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\Shell\runas] "HasLUAShield"=""  [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\runas\Command] @=hex(2):22,00,25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,\    00,25,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,6d,00,\   73,00,69,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,63,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,22,00,20,00,2f,\   00,69,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,20,00,25,00,2a,00,00,00
  • Or download the file already made from my company server at http://www.theprojectdev.com/public/pub.html  **i put this there as a courtesy to help others like me, its just a complete reg file, so either create your own through copy and pasting above or download it.  Either way, put it on your desktop.
  • Now double click the new registry file, and allow/ok it to do its thing. 
  • Once done, you can discard the file from your desktop, or keep, your choice.
  • Guess What!?  Now we can do the impossible!  Lets revisit that solution from before by going to the newest BootCamp 5.0.5033, and navigate to BootCamp/drivers/Apple and select that tricky BootCamp MSI file that wouldnt allow us to run, this time RIGHT CLICK it.  Because of our new registry entry we placed, we now have an option to "Run as Administrator"  Click that option.
  • WooHoo!  We have done what coudnt be done, BootCamp will now walk you through the installer, and add all the great support for Windows 8 on your mid 09 Macbook Pro that they for some reason neglected!
  • After the update, you will endure yet another restart.  From there, most likely using a wired mouse still, navigate to the system tray icon on the bottom right corner of the screen (little up arrow) and click it.  It will pop up a little menu, showing system processes/stuff running, click the gray squared diamond (this is bootcamp) and it will bring up the newest BootCamp control panel.  From here, you can nav to trackpad/touchpad and set tap to click (finally) and gestures, etc.  This control panel has lots of good stuff to make a MBP user feel comfortable in Windows 8.  There you go!  You did it!

 

 

I really, sincerely hope this helps someone, as it really made my day to get this resolved.  I want to add that all On Screen Displays will work (your volume/brightness etc)  they keyboard backlighting, and so much more, it really works great.  I upgraded my hard drive to 1tb, and installed 8gb of PNY RAM from best buy ($40) and it runs Windows 8, AND OSX fantastically.

 

My company http://www.theprojectdev.com designs and develops mobile apps (iOS and Android) and web design and development, so im a heavy user of both OS's, and this setup is just the best thing that has happened to me in a portable sense. Runs so so so fast!  Enjoy everyone! 

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Mar 17, 2013 8:28 PM

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Q: How to install Windows 8 on Mid 09 Macbook Pro (10.8.3)

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  • by antswork,

    antswork antswork Jun 1, 2013 6:38 AM in response to projectRelentless
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 1, 2013 6:38 AM in response to projectRelentless

    Thanks for the thread projectRelentless,

    My problem was almost the same with my macbook pro 13in mid 2012 osx 10.8.3 bootcamp 5.0.2.... I installed the windows 8 first because I thought that I could use windows support downloaded from my macpro 10.7.3 using bootcamp 4.0.4 but when I tried to run the bootcamp support it says it does not support my macbook pro, so I re-run bootcamp 5.0.2 from my macbook and tried to download the WindowsSupport file and as what you have mentioned I encountered same error saying my mac supports only windows 7 but then I ignored it and proceed to download the support for windows 7 and took up almost 2 hours before I decided to cancel the download because it seems its not moving anymore  ....after reading more threads I came up with just downloading directly the file bootcamp 5.0.5.033 from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1638?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US and run it succesfully. this solved my problem.

     

    My conclussion:

    Just download the 5.0.5.033

    Use wired mouse to enable right click option to run as admin

     

    by the way my macpro with osx 10.7.3 has a bootcamp 4.0.4 running windows 8 and did not have any issue with the installation using a multiple bit ISO windows 8 installer but my macbook pro won't recognise it as a 64 bit OS so I needed to burn another installer with a single platform (64bit only).

  • by antswork,

    antswork antswork Jun 1, 2013 6:51 AM in response to M4rbin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 1, 2013 6:51 AM in response to M4rbin

    I think you also have to press alt/option + F1 or F2. it works for me

  • by rapture_elk,

    rapture_elk rapture_elk Jun 3, 2013 7:35 AM in response to projectRelentless
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 3, 2013 7:35 AM in response to projectRelentless

    THANK YOU!! Like a charm... I had given up on getting Win 8 to recognise my specifically Apple keyboard, adjust brightness, the trackpad, etc etc (and access my HFS+ partition... I was about to purchase MacDrive 9 for that)... I will say that I got one or two things fixed before your trick of installing BootCamp 5 with Reg Edit/Run As Admin on teh MSI file. I had already successfully installed Win 8 because I just did it straight from within Win 7 which I already had via BootCamp. No Audio worked though (and of course no BootCamp assistant/drivers). I Individually installed manually each Apple driver in teh BootCamp 5 archive, this didn't help much but updated the iSight camera. Still no audio... then I manually installed the RealTek Audio and that gave me audio. This was before getting BootCamp 5 to work. So already Win 8 was very much useable. The Apple keyboard doesn't vary much from the PC one and MacDrive works well to access HFS+ disks. But this is much better! Thanks again.

     

     

    MacBook Pro 4,1 (2008)

    500GB SATA, 6GB 667, NVidia GeForce 8600GT

    OS X Mountain Lion / Win 8 Pro x64 dual boot

     

    still truckin'

  • by projectRelentless,

    projectRelentless projectRelentless Jun 3, 2013 11:41 AM in response to rapture_elk
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jun 3, 2013 11:41 AM in response to rapture_elk

    Thanks for the feedback everyone, again it's great to see everyone working together here! 

  • by cfloyd27,

    cfloyd27 cfloyd27 Jun 8, 2013 4:20 PM in response to projectRelentless
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 8, 2013 4:20 PM in response to projectRelentless

    Thanx projectRelentless for your tutorial!

     

    Everything worked great...up to the last step I hope you may be able to give a little advice. I downloaded and copied the script to my desktop and ran it. i navigated to Bootcamp/Drivers/Apple but when i click run as administrator I get the error message "This installation package is not suported by this processor type. Contact your product vendor."

     

    Is there anything i can do about this? Any help is greatly apreciated! Thanx in advance!

  • by rapture_elk,

    rapture_elk rapture_elk Jun 11, 2013 2:59 AM in response to cfloyd27
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 11, 2013 2:59 AM in response to cfloyd27

    I had to extract the .msi bootcamp file from the .rar/.zip archive before it would work. I dragged it to the desktop so it extracted there, then right-clicked and Ran As Administrator. Then finally it worked. Try that?

  • by petieg,

    petieg petieg Jun 11, 2013 9:45 PM in response to antswork
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jun 11, 2013 9:45 PM in response to antswork

    This is great! I'm so glad to see a community come together like this.  projectRelentless -- i wish you the best of luck and thanks for getting this kickstarted!  (It does get easier when you break up - Neil Sedaka had it right though.) 

     

    antswork has it right... just run the 5.0.5.033:  unzip it (c:\BC would be nice and short) and then from an elevated Command Prompt navigate to c:\BC\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple   then type msiexec /a bootcamp.msi  and it'll install just fine.  According to devmgmt.msc (run from Command Prompt) the only thing i was missing was the Coprocessor driver -- which i was able to extract from the earlier BootCamp4.0.4033.zip under \BootCamp\Drivers\Nvidia\NvidiaChipset64.  Right click on Coprocessor in Device Manager and update the driver. Direct Windows to the folder on the desktop for (v4.0.4033 driver) \Drivers\NVidia\NVidiaChipset64 (or 32 if you are running x86).   Awesome! 

  • by Klap,

    Klap Klap Jun 14, 2013 4:12 PM in response to projectRelentless
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 14, 2013 4:12 PM in response to projectRelentless

    Thanks so much for this man, my windows 8 setup caused bluescreens 50% of the time. Used your trick with the windows 8 bootcamp loader and im running at 100%... im in your debt.

  • by projectRelentless,

    projectRelentless projectRelentless Jun 14, 2013 7:39 PM in response to Klap
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jun 14, 2013 7:39 PM in response to Klap

    Good to hear of more success stories!  Please feel free to contact me with any issues, as I am lately on the move a lot.  I'll be glad to help any which way I can!

     

    <Email Edited by Host>

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Jun 14, 2013 7:19 PM in response to projectRelentless
    Level 9 (51,161 points)
    Desktops
    Jun 14, 2013 7:19 PM in response to projectRelentless

    Hi PJ, how are you doing?

     

    It's a bad idea to post your email in public, I'll have it removed for you.

  • by Gideon65,

    Gideon65 Gideon65 Jun 19, 2013 6:10 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 19, 2013 6:10 AM in response to Csound1

    Thanks so much for these extremely helpfull posts...it has made my life so much easier...

     

    I did the whole Bootcamp/Macbook Pro/windows 8 combination and got everything to work so well...using your guidance of course. I was so happy with the machine...then disaster, a brand new 1 TB harddrive decided to do the "click of death".

     

    Luckely for me I had already downloaded all updates for windows and Mountain Lion etc. (which is not so easy with internet speed in Tanzania - Africa) for my first installation, so the re-install to another new 1TB drive went quick and well. The Display Adapter, Touch Pad and Sound works perfectly....

     

    But Bluetooth has a problem... :-(

     

    The BT drivers did not install. I tried the drivers from Bootcamp 4 and Bootcamp 5.2 but no luck...

     

    Can someone please tell me which specific BT driver to use?

    Cheers

     

    ps.  I love the "Classic Start Meny 3.6.7.  for Windows 8....it feels like "real" Windows :-)

  • by hoainam12k,

    hoainam12k hoainam12k Jul 8, 2013 9:52 PM in response to projectRelentless
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 8, 2013 9:52 PM in response to projectRelentless

    Thank you for this great tutorial. Just want to notice you need 4.0.4033 (http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1630) not 4.1.4586

     

    4.0.4033 include drivers for macbook mid 2009, mid 2010

  • by projectRelentless,

    projectRelentless projectRelentless Jul 11, 2013 10:03 AM in response to hoainam12k
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jul 11, 2013 10:03 AM in response to hoainam12k

    Just checking in, everyone running good?  I have yet to have any issues, thanks again for the praise for this guy!

  • by voliob,

    voliob voliob Jul 31, 2013 4:24 AM in response to projectRelentless
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 31, 2013 4:24 AM in response to projectRelentless

    Thank you very much projectRelentless. This worked great. My iMac was 6 months out of the loop but this work around saved the day.

  • by adarkenigma,

    adarkenigma adarkenigma Jul 31, 2013 11:35 PM in response to projectRelentless
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 31, 2013 11:35 PM in response to projectRelentless

    I want to do this on my early 2009 MBP 5,2. I was able to install windows 8 32 bit with superdrive. but windows 8 iso is about 5 gigs. It wont fit on DVD. How do you get you computer to recogize Windows 8 64bit USB install? or do i need to get dual layer DVD?

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