Found a way to get BC 5.0 working on a "non-supported" 2009 Macbook

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Found a way to get BC 5.0 working on a "non-supported" 2009 Macbook

Hi all,

After reading a lot about Bootcamp, Windows 8 and the support for BC 5.0, I thought it would be nice to share my experiences so far...

Background

I am a Microsoft SQL Server developer and have been using my 2009 Macbook Pro and mid 2011 MacMini for this purpose. I do not run OSX on my machines but just Windows including the Bootcamp drivers. For me this represents the best of two worlds: Apples exquisite hardware combined with the very good Windows 7 and 8 OS.

I have been running Windows 7 for years with no problems and last december made the switch to running Windows Server 2012 as my main OS. This is the server version of Windows 8 and very similar "under the hood".

Setup

As said I run just Windows. I simply format my whole HDD (with MBR) using a OSX install on a external HDD of USB stick and then install Windows. After that I install bootcamp. So far I have been using the Windows 7 BC 4.0 version with Windows Server 2012 and this worked fine. The only glitches it had were the non-present on screen display while changing the volume, screen brightness and keyboard backlight brightness. All the rest worked fine (well besides Bluetooth but that is because Microsoft in his wisdom decided that a server OS does not need BT support).

OSX 10.8.3

I was very eager to try this out as it annoyed me quite a bit that the OSD for the above settings worked just fine in W7 but not in W8. But then I read that my 2009 MBP was not supported... And indeed, after unzipping the BC 5.0 package I got a message saying:

Bummer. So I decided to digg in a but deeper and went to the folder:

..\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple

And started bootcamp.msi. And voila:

Bootcamp 5 installs just fine on my "non-supported" 2009 MBP! In order to make it run you have to start it using Administrative privileges in Windows 8

After installing all still worked fine and yes, I do now have OSD for volume and screen brightness controll!

But still not for keyboard backlight... but I guess Apple just left something to be desired for OSX 10.9 😉

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Erik

MacBook Pro

Posted on Mar 17, 2013 6:04 AM

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Answer 1

rnwjr

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Mar 17, 2013 1:43 PM in response to ErikvanD

Nicely done! I will be trying this on my MacBook (Late 2009) tonight!!!

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Answer 2

vea1083

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Mar 17, 2013 2:05 PM in response to ErikvanD

A great find... I run a Mid-2010 15" MacBook Pro which is supported under BC 5.0 but know a college friend that has a 2009 15" MBP and wants to run Windows 8 on it via Bootcamp, so I will share this link with him.

A quick question if you don't mind as some consider this threadjacking, but do you know what is the version of the nvidia drivers on Bootcamp 5.0? Are the drivers from the 3XX.XX series?

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Answer 3

ErikvanD Author

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Mar 17, 2013 2:34 PM in response to ErikvanD

When a cloud passed the sun a few minutes ago after I made my posted, I noticed that the OSD for keyboard backlight was working as it should! It apparently only starts when the surrounding area gets darker. Never noticed this behaviour on Windows 7 though...

NVIDIA version in BC 5.0 is 306.37 so not that old...

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Answer 4

vea1083

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714 points

Mar 17, 2013 2:38 PM in response to ErikvanD

ErikvanD wrote:

NVIDIA version in BC 5.0 is 306.37 so not that old...

Thanks for the information!

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Answer 5

danno75

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Mar 20, 2013 12:30 PM in response to ErikvanD

This is a great find, and a bad move by Apple. I did this and it worked, and I had to do the DisableDynamicTicks fix with BCDEdit in order to stop random freezes which I was also experiencing. With that it seems my 2009 macbook pro is running windows 8 perfectly well.

So what baffles me is why Apple would simply decide not to support this macbook with bootcamp 5/windows 8 simply for the reason "not to support it" Obviously it is perfectly capable and compatible with the drivers so why not support it. I am loosing respect for Apple based on this move.

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Answer 6

Nov 8, 2013 9:07 PM in response to ErikvanD

I have too loaded the Bootcamp v5.0.5033 drivers on my 2009 MBP 17" (MacBook 5,2) running Windows 8.1 with success. For anyone interested, laptopvideo2go.com has an modded INF capible of installing the latest NVIDIA drivers for even older models (requires Advanced boot-F7 to temporarily disable signed driver enforcement).

For anyone like me experiencing an issue with the brightness function controls not working, see the following thread:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1567916

This thread has 2 simultaneous but different topics happening, one for Adaptive brightness settings in the Windows power controls, and the manual brightness adjustment with a MacBook (and possibly others) laptop function keys; my reply is in regards to the latter. It appears the brightness controls are now controlled by Windows rather than the Bootcamp Keyboard OSD manager. Strange as the backlit keyboard and volume function keys show the on-screen display and work fine, but the brightness is the default windows OSD slider and does not change.

As amk29j and bb426 confirm, the issue is resolved by disabling the 'Generic PNP Monitor'; upon rebooting, the "Brightness" FN-Control is now functioning back on the OSD and the Bootcamp Control Panel has a tab for it.

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Answer 7

iwitzel

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Mar 27, 2014 7:51 AM in response to ErikvanD

I have a late 2009 iMac, which has non supported graphic drivers and I downloaded those drivers from Apple and installed Boot Camp ok, but the Boot Camp conrol panel did not install.

I downloaded the version 5 Boot Camp, put it on a USB stick and deleted the NVidia drivers folder (not sure if you really need to do this but since the first boot camp intall graphic drivers were working I did not want any new drivers added).

Booted in Windows 7, used the cmd line with admin privledges to run the boot camp 64 installer from the USB stick and now I have the boot camp control panel working.

Next is getting iSight to work under windows.

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Answer 8

Jun 29, 2014 2:00 PM in response to ErikvanD

Hi, I have an older MacBook Pro running 32-bit Windows 8.1 and I would like to get Bluetooth working. This thread is the closest solution I have found so far, but I cannot get the software to launch as you did in your example. If you have a few minutes and could point me to any other possible solutions, I would appreciate it. I've been to several sites and talked with a couple Apple Genius Associates. When I launch the file suggested, I am getting an error that says... "This installation package is not supported by this processor type. Contact your product vendor."

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