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

Apr 2, 2013 4:31 PM in response to mygavin

Thanks! I will keep this flagged. Though if I cannot get a stable version of windows 64 bit running, ther eis no point in upgrading my RAM.


I'm kind of new to all this. Is it possible to run some sort of scan in Windows to look for basic faults in the OS? Given the nature of the freeze where it is unbound to any one program and locks out task manager I feel like it is explorer or w/e its called in 8 having an issue or some other such background process.

May 11, 2013 2:50 PM in response to projectRelentless

I tried to install Windows 8 a month or so back on my Late 2009 27in iMac. I did some workaround for the drivers but don't remember what it was, and got it working but experienced the freezing issues talked about here (sometimes immeidately, sometimes not for a while). I stoped using w8 because i was scared of the freezes. Since I have gotten a time machine drive a week ago and since reading this, I might try and boot it up again tonight and see what happens.


Stay tuned for inevitable problems!

May 21, 2013 10:58 AM in response to projectRelentless

Hi, many thanks.


With your suggestion I was able to install everything on my iMac 21,5 late 2009.


Just one problem, altough F1-F2 does popup brightness indicator, brightness is stuck to the maxumum level.


Even going thru the Boot Camp applet is does not change anything.


Also, Windows brightness indicator is not available.


Any suggestion apart to completely remove and reinstall video drivers?

May 22, 2013 8:54 AM in response to justin.gengo

Hi Justin,


thanks for your answer.

The scenario is exactly inverse.


- Windows 8 Brightness indicator is not available.

- Hitting fn+F1 or F2 does pop up Apple Brightness indicator and it does move. However display brightness is not affected (brightness doesn't change)

- The same in Brightness tab in BootCamp Application, I can use the slider but if I click on Apply it doesn't change anything.


I already tried to change "Adaptive Brightness" option as suggested somewhere but no luck.


Thank!


Edit: BTW I tried disabling the screen... no luck..

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!

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 :-)

Oct 17, 2013 11:32 AM in response to aplet

I had originally installed Windows 7 with Boot Camp 4 and then upgraded to Winodws 8. Evrything ran fine at that point and never knew there was Boot Camp 5 available. When 8.1 came out, I kept getting BSOD and realized it was my Boot Camp that was doing it. I followed the steps to install Boot Camp 5, but when I click msi file (after running that reg file) it starts the installation, but then error pops up that says: "Boot Camp requires that you computer is running Windows 7". Any suggestions on how to get around this?

Nov 9, 2013 9:30 PM in response to aplet

This sounds great but did not work for me. After giving myelf permission to info.plist, I opened the file and made the changes. (Removed 5.5 from win7only and added 5.5 to usb support). It asked me to make a duplicate on the desktop with the changes and left the original one the same.


This of course did nothing to bootcamp assistant, and wouldn't let me install windows 8 just the same. I copied the NEW version on the desktop over the original inside of the package contents, but this only made Boot Camp Assistant.app crash and not work at all.


I am not sure what exactly it is you did, as your instructions only said to make the duplicate. If you found some way of modifying the original and not corrupt the app, I'd really appreciate it if you could upload the modified app onto googledocs or something and send me the link.


Cheers.

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

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