MacBook Pro 13'' (mid 2010) Windows 8 support

I have been running Windows 8 on the same model (MacBook Pro 13" (mid 2010) for about a month and haven't experienced any issues with it so far. I am not 100% certain that the trackpad gestures all work, however, most of them seem to, I was able to adjust the clicks to my preference and scrolling up and down and sideways works.

I had been waiting for Apple to issue properly supported drivers just because I like to ensure I keep everything as up to date and compatable as possible and I am rather annoyed that Apple isn't supporting this model but at least you can get it working. I also own a 17" MacBook Pro 2011 and a myriad of other Apple products and to me it is important that my laptop is able to run Windows even though I use the OS side more frequently. If Apple is not supporting Windows 8 in the hope that people will just buy new MacBooks more frequently I think it will backfire on them because that shows they don't care about thier customers. That is a mistake in my opinion because I would have bought another MacBook perhaps in a year or two but I won't if I think Apple is trying to force customers to upgrade early unnecessairly.

In my case I installed Windows 7 first and then upgraded to Windows 8. I made sure to fully update Windows 7 before upgrading. Initially the trackpad didn't work so I used a USB mouse and then updated Windows 8 with the most recent patches, etc. Then to get the trackpad working I followed advice I found on another forum which basically consisted of going to the drivers section (Device Manager) of Windows 8 and changing the drivers which were marked yellow (as not working or compatible) to USB drivers. My trackpad then worked and I went on to make some changes to get the clicking to work the way I wanted and to lower the sensitivity of the scrolling. Now I am perfectly happy. Unfortunately, I don't know how to install Windows 8 directly (clean install) without installing Windows 7 first but if you search some more I think others have done it. All I can say for certain is that you can install Windows 8 and have it work really well on this MacBook if you upgrade from Windows 7, it just takes a bit of searching on forums as to how to get the trackpad working smoothly.

The only other thing I would note is that if you are short of space on the Windows partition, you can free up a lot of additional space by deleting the Windows 7 recovery once Windows 8 is up and running. I was initially surprised at how much space Windows 8 took up but after searching other forums I found I was able to free up a substantion amount of space (I think around 30GB if I remember correctly).

I wish I could have been of more help but I wanted you to know that it was at least possible to run Windows 8 well on your MacBook Pro model. I am really happy with its performance now on mine.

The Windows 7 drivers from the last version of Bootcamp work well enough to install Windows 8, then when you have it installed if you manually check for and install the lastest updates it will update all of the drivers to ones that will work the best for Windows 8. The only thing that needs a bit of additional effort to get working is the trackpad. I will try to find the post that showed me how get the trackpad working.

Are you doing a clean install of Windows 8 or do you have Windows 7 to install first?

It is probably worth persevering because it will work really well when you finally get it to work.

The most recent Windows 7 drivers should work enough to get you up and running, I used the ones from the last version of Bootcamp Assistant. The only driver that didn't work is the trackpad so if you have a USB mouse handy that would come in helpful.

I also had to reboot my MacBook Pro while holding down the alt/option key and then selected the Windows partition as it hung during the process but it must have completed as it worked when I went into it that way.

I have the Windows 7 Drivers from the install I did on my 17" MacBook Pro but I can't seem to find the disc for the install I did on this machine (my 13"). I would recommend trying to download the Windows 7 drivers again using Bootcamp Assistant because they should work for you at least enough to get up and running until you do the updates. If you get stuck I can look harder to see if I can find the disc I made when I set up this MacBook and can see if there is a way I can get them to you. I also installed my Windows 8 using a USB like you so you should be able to do it.

FYI, I used Bootcamp Assistant to make the partition that I installed W8 on rather than using Disk Utility, I am not sure if that will make a difference for you but it might. On the Apple Support forum for BootCamp it says: "Bootcamp Assistant does not erase your existing Mac OS X partition or any of your Mac OS X software when it creates a new partition for Microsoft Windows" so you should be safe to use it, although there are risks with any software installation especially when playing with partitions so I can't absolutely guarantee it.

I took this information from here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5639 which recommends always using Bootcamp Assistant to make the partition.

Windows8 works perfectly in my mid 2010 MBP 13',there will be random crashes if all the drivers given in bootcamp4 are manually installed (except those incompatible,with errors etc).

Windows 8 has actually natively support many of the hardwares,they will just work even without drivers.

Some known issues that I've encountered so far:

1)Fn key not working

2)trackpad(no right click)

3)sound issues

4)bluetooth not working

5)graphic driver is fine,but I manually download the latest one from NVIDIA website.

I don't have any wireless trackpad,keyboard so I'm not sure whether it will work.

For my mac I only installed sound drivers ,Cirrus Logic and updated graphic driver to the latest,it just works perfectly.

Hi, i managed to install BootCamp 5 on MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010).

I started by upgrading from Windows 7 (with BootCamp 4) to Windows 8, and then to my surprise i found that, for some reason, the MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) did not suppoting BootCamp 5. Info about this found in a table on this page http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634.

My Solution

1. Download the BootCamp 5 zip-file and extract, download from here http://support.apple.com/downloads/DL1638/en_US/BootCamp5.0.5033.zip
2. Start a command prompt as administrator, and navigate to the following folder inside the extracted files \BootCamp5.0.5033\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\
3. Type msiexec /i BootCamp.msi, hit enter, and the installer should start just fine

Thats it, now trackpad, fn-key and more works.

Hi, i managed to install BootCamp 5 on MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010).

I started by upgrading from Windows 7 (with BootCamp 4) to Windows 8, and then to my surprise i found that, for some reason, the MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) did not suppoting BootCamp 5. Info about this found in a table on this page http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634.

My Solution

1. Download the BootCamp 5 zip-file and extract, download from here http://support.apple.com/downloads/DL1638/en_US/BootCamp5.0.5033.zip
2. Start a command prompt as administrator, and navigate to the following folder inside the extracted files \BootCamp5.0.5033\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\
3. Type msiexec /i BootCamp.msi, hit enter, and the installer should start just fine

Thats it, now trackpad, fn-key and more works.

Hi, i managed to install BootCamp 5 on MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010).

I started by upgrading from Windows 7 (with BootCamp 4) to Windows 8, and then to my surprise i found that, for some reason, the MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) did not suppoting BootCamp 5. Info about this found in a table on this page http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634.

My Solution

1. Download the BootCamp 5 zip-file and extract, download from here http://support.apple.com/downloads/DL1638/en_US/BootCamp5.0.5033.zip
2. Start a command prompt as administrator, and navigate to the following folder inside the extracted files \BootCamp5.0.5033\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\
3. Type msiexec /i BootCamp.msi, hit enter, and the installer should start just fine

Thats it, now trackpad, fn-key and more works.

Start a command prompt as administrator (select run as administrator). Type

msiexec -i "C:\Users\Alex\BootCamp5.0.5033\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\BootCamp.msi"

and hit enter. The installer should start. What happens?

Hmmm, i was lucky to get it working then. I gues there is a resason BootCamp 5 is not supported on MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010).

Right now everything except the iSight camera seems to work for me, including BlueTooth, sound and trackpad. To get the sound working i had to manually run the CirrusAudio64.exe installer.