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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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 18, 2013 1:14 PM

projectRelentless thank you for taking you time to do this and help all of us loyal Apple users. I was able to install Windows 8 on my MacBook (Late 2009) by following you instructions last night. Since the BC 4 drivers would not install I skipped the step and went on to BC 5 drivers. It seems to be working okay on everything. If its working is there any reason why I should go back and install the other package and then install the 5 again?


Thanks again! Much appreciated!

187 replies

Mar 18, 2013 2:03 PM in response to projectRelentless

Thanks so much rnwjr, I've learned so much from forums, and it feels good to be able to contribute!


I'm regards to skipping the earlier set of drivers, nope there is absolutely no reason at all, especially of it worked for you. I just took every precaution when I did it myself as it was an uncharted land, but you just proved you do not need to do it...HOWEVER, in some users case, maybe the keyboard or wifi or some other item needed to proceed wouldn't work and they might need to do the earlier set first, though I don't really ever see that happening.


I'm really glad to see it working for people, windows 8 is fantastic and I hope osx follows suit, I'm in love with the metro interface, and a MBP makes it that much cooler!

Mar 21, 2013 7:53 AM in response to projectRelentless

Ok, im in Win8, and in the system tray manager, where the bootcamp control panel is, do you have a green Nvidia Settins icon? If so launch it, ensure it comes up saying Nvidia Geforce 9400m - and the vesion number should be right there. grab that for me and we will go from there.


I was thinking on the update from office365, i use office pro 2013 in my partition, and all updates that come in are held until restart... so its possible this update its trying to do on the fly very well could be clouding your windows experience.


but i still just want to verify that we are running the same drivers

Apr 5, 2013 8:10 AM in response to rtheb

Hello all, again apologies for me not being as active as I was. My personal life has cut some deep wounds into my life, and unfortunately I've been busy with adjusting to it.


So installs are not the issue with everyone, you are all getting frequent freezes, and on my life, i dont believe ive ever had one at all. and as stated, i mainly use w8 for the office suite, vs2012, and android dev. as for web browsing, im using google chrome. rnwjr seemed to get the issue when surfing the net... what are you all using when this happens?


I'm booting to w8 now, and posting a pic of drivers and their versions... Instill believe its an Nvidia issue...

Feb 17, 2014 7:42 PM in response to mitchell212

Lol, dont worry i fixed it myself. Tried installation again with another Microsoft Windows 8.1 installation disc and worked a charm. Had an issue with Bootcamp 4033 update, just troubleshooted and chose option previously installed on windows 7 and then the installer began. Bootcamp 5033 worked perfectly and now my Mid 2010 13" Macbook White is running a dual boot of both OS X Mavericks 10.9.1 and Windows 8.1.

I have noticed that in the taskbar windows has flagged the NVIDIA driver updates to tell me that NVIDIA is no longer providing driver updates for my hardware & software configurations.

All in all, my system seems to be running beyond expectations!! Thankyou projectRelentless, I think many more of us may have been cursing Apple & our Macbooks if it weren't for you. Much appreciated!

Feb 17, 2014 7:46 PM in response to superjamesus

If you are having trouble with Boot Camp update 4.0.4033, I can't exactly remember what I did, but if the option to troubleshoot arises, troubleshoot the program and when it gives you the option say you have previously installed the program and say on windows 7 and then the installer should work. Thats all i can help you with unfortunately, let me know if you have any luck though!

Feb 7, 2015 9:06 PM in response to vrl2

Update: I've narrowed it down to the NVIDIA driver.

Details: I took the following steps to install Windows 8.1 on my late-2009 13” Macbook Pro. I’m also able to install the latest bootcamp drivers (5.1.5621). Unfortunately, the system fails to boot if I install any version of the NVIDA driver for my GeForce 9400M. The system’s video runs as “Windows Basic Display” as a result, and I can’t take advantage of the GPU. Not sure what to try next - any help would be appreciated.

Steps to install Windows w/ Bootcamp Drivers:


1) (Note: I’ve replaced my superdrive with a separate drive for Windows 8.1, and Mavericks is on it’s own SSD). In Disk Utility, create single a free space partition on the Windows 8.1 drive.


2) Modify and Bootcamp’s Info.plist according to the steps shown here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1414851

and sign it with:

sudo codesign -fs - /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app


3) Using Bootcamp Assistant, create a bootable USB (in “select tasks,” also check the second box to download the latest support software from Apple).


4) Reboot with “option” and select the USB (now labeled EFIboot)


5) Use the windows installer to create a new partition, format it, and install windows


6) Download the latest bootcamp drivers from Apple (version 5.1.561 - although same results with all versions of 5.0 drivers). Since “setup.exe” gives an error, navigate to “\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\BootCamp.msi” and run it from an elevated command prompt to install bootcamp drivers.


7) **IMPORTANT: At this point, the NVIDIA drivers that come with bootcamp (v. 337.88) cause windows to crash. Just before reaching the login prompt, the screen goes blank and the system reboots. Uninstalling the NVIDIA graphics drivers in Safe Mode allows Windows to boot - except with poor video support.


8) To fix the exclamation mark next to “Coprocessor” in Device Manager, Download BootCamp 4.0.4033 (later versions do not help with this error). Right click and “Update Drivers” and point it to the BootCamp directory.


9) Windows Update will recommend a chipset update (15.35_nforce_win7_64bit_international_whql.exe). This will offer an SMU update, an ethernet update, and a storage driver update. Only the SMU update works - the other two produce an identical crash.

I’ve tried NVIDIA driver versions 331.82, 335.23, and 340.52. All of them crash during installation (the screen goes black and the system reboots), preventing the driver from installing. Installing from safe mode produces the same boot-up error as the 337.88 driver. I’d be gratefull for any direction.


Cheers,


vrl2

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

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