Successful Windows 10 Upgrade, 2011 iMac 27", Anyone Else?

Gave it another shot and unfortunately it did not work again. I might do a fresh install once I back up all my data.

The download link for Boot Camp Support Software 5.1.5621

You can find other downloads on Apple - Support - Downloads for other versions of Boot Camp, except 6

You can also just run Boot Camp assistant on the Mac side, and have it download the drivers but it expects a USB storage device for it to work.

I actually just noticed - I already have Boot Camp v6.0.0 already installed! It must have come along with El Capitan, I am guessing. I do not remember installing it, so it must have either been with I installed the OS X beta, or an automatic update. I am running the same Mac that many here are listing, so perhaps the OS is the difference. It is still weird, though, since Apple officially says they do not support this. I am still waiting on my Windows 10 upgrade to become available to me though, so I will keep everyone posted on my experience whenever it becomes available. I 'reserved' it yesterday afternoon, via Windows 8.1.

CORRECTION TO PREVIOUS POST: My iMac is actually a late-2009, but everything else still applies.

Well, simply put, everything went off without a hitch! Reservation time was just over 24-hours. Will post again if I encounter any problems.

Did you upgrade via windows or a clean bootcamp install? (speaking of, are you able to upgrade via bootcamp or is it only clean installations?)

I upgraded via Windows 8.1. A clean install, as I understand, costs $129 but upgrading was free.

I can also confirm I have bootcamp 6 on my beta mac even though apple doesn't support it officially and my beta mac is a 2009 mac mini as opposed to my main mac which is of course a mid 2011 27' i7 imac I can't make head or tails out of it

I have the same model as you, and I did the upgrade from windows 7 as well. I however did have a problem after converting to Windows 10. Periodically my system would for no reason crash and reboot. I figured it is a graphics card incompatibility, but don't know for sure so I reverted back to Windows 7.

I can confirm W10 Professional 64-bit working fine on an i5-2400s mid 2011 21.5" iMac. 6750m GPU and 8GB of memory, 256 GB SSD + 2TB HDD (using OWC in-line digital thermal sensor cable to avoid SMCfancontrol). Initially upgraded from W7 to W10 on the HDD, but now after testing it for a while will move the partition over to the SSD. Latest Bootcamp 5 drivers installed, but only part of them work (e.g. apple keyboard controls for brightness etc don't work). Waiting for BC 6 drivers to be released officially for 2011 models, but am happy with performance etc. so far. Apple's statement that 64 bit W10 doesn't work on a mid 2011 21.5" iMac is false, although I will give them the fact that even hacking Boot Camp assistant to create USB installers will not let you install Windows off a USB (haven't tested 8.1, which has been reported to be possible to install via USB on a 21.5" mid 2011 iMac). Optical drive installation only way to go so far... *sigh*.

Windows 10 Pro running perfectly after upgrade. Mac Mini (late 2012) OS X Mavericks.

Reinstall Boot Camp 5 from thumbdrive. After Boot Camp restart, in Windows 10 Start Menu, open Apple Software Update App. Check Box - Boot Camp 6 and away you go!!! Hope this helps everyone. I know it will. Boot Camp 6 is available through Apple Software Update app! Spread the news!

Windows !0

Start>Apple Software Update>select Bootcamp 6

Cheers!! 😉

Update to earlier post: Did a clean install of W10 off a disk (USB boot would still not work as restricted to EFI boot), then installed boot camp drivers (5.1) - Apple keyboard etc now working as it should. Will still not update to BC 6, but not a worry anymore. Oh and as the previous installation was an upgrade, the clean install is much smaller in size (surprisingly the 16 GB Microsoft originally stated). Haven't tried running the clean install process after an upgrade, although did run clean-ups etc after the upgrade to clear out some junk.

Hello.
I have the said computer with AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB.

Performed upgrade to win 10 from fresh windows 8.1 pro as soon as it came out.

I did not have any issues for a while except the function keys, i could not get the brightness, volume keys to function..

Now at some point in time, im guessing with some of the regular windows updates my graphics card drivers went coo coo(best description).
I cannot start up AMD Catalyst and fps in some games i usually play degraded to the point of the said games being unplayable(WOW and LOL).

Anyone else has the same problem?
And to those who do not, can you link me your drivers so i try those. 🙂

Have a nice day.
Leo

Hi,

Just thought I would mention that I installed windows 10 on my mid 2011 Imac without a hitch. So far I am very impressed with it and , of course, Windows works better on Mac hardware than it does on the slow chip PC machines that most people buy. Although the blurb says that the new Windows 10 Bootcamp update does not support this model, I downloaded the update to USB and installed it and 'hey presto', my Apple keyboard works just as before with all the keys doing what they should.

Cheers

We had similar issues with my iMac (mid-2011 21.5"). I believe it is due to an issue with the updated AMD drivers. I resorted to the original bootcamp drivers and haven't seen the black screen since. My black screen (with cursor movement) was occurring during cold-boots.

I have a mid-2011 iMac. 12 Gb RAM and updated 2 Tb HDD (a wholly other story....). Everything else is stock.

I have been very happy with this machine. Frankly, it is the best Windows machine I've ever had - by far!

Based on this extraordinarily helpful thread, I went ahead and installed Win10 from Win7. I followed every set of instructions I could find (upgrade to Yosemite; download latest 5.xxx Bootcamp Drivers [not 6]; back up EVERYTHING - TWICE....).

I have very, very little running in the background on the Windows side of things. I religiously go into MSCONFIG and disable stuff that gets installed there. I think that helps my Windows experience a lot.

The installation went off with only two hitches: I had to reinstall the wired Apple keyboard AND the AMD video card drivers - that's it. (I did get the black screen, and the video-card-driver reinstall fixed that.)

So far, I am happy with Win10 - though I was happy with Win 7. I have it set up as closely as possible to Win 7 because I was comfortable with that interface. But Win10 has been stable, a little sexier, and I assume has erected bigger security barriers in the background. And I really upgraded for the improved security and the future MS support.

So, all-in-all, I'm very happy with the upgrade and how smoothly it went.

And a big "thank you" to you trailblazers who jumped into the deep end of this pool and showed that it was okay.

Thanks, all.

(And good luck to you folks who have had glitches.)