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

Just a data point for everyone out there who is considering an upgrade to Windows 10. How many others who have had a smooth transition are out there?

I have a mid-2011 iMac, 27", running OS X 10.10.4 (Yosemite) and I recently reinstalled Windows 7 after the previous Windows 7 installation, which was about four years old, became unstable and crashed. I'm also running BCA 5.1.4, and when I reinstalled Windows 7 I had a USB drive with the most recent Apple drivers for Windows (just downloaded for the Windows 7 reinstall) plugged into the machine, so presumably I am running the most recent drivers for this machine.

Regarding the Windows 10 upgrade, normally I am not an early adopter of anything; in this case, my intent was to download the installer and wait until Apple released El Capitan. I figured the possibility of avoiding a future purchase of Windows 10 made it worth attempting. However, when I clicked "Yes" on the "Try Windows 10" popup that I kept getting, I had no idea they would be delivering this upgrade via Windows Update, and there would be no easy way of stopping it. Even hiding the update would not prevent it from downloading, and their promise that I could download and install later really amounted to anytime in the next two days. There was no other option presented.

Since the reinstall of Windows 7 wasn't totally done, I figured I would take a chance, instead of possibly paying $119 or whatever W10 down the road. So I allowed W10 to be installed.

I'm happy to report the upgrade appears to have went off without a hitch. It wasn't a clean install, but rather an upgrade from W7. I was quite surprised at how painless it was, actually. When I had completed the installation, I was momentarily speechless to find that all my software appeared to be intact, and it seems that I can basically pick up where I left off with my W7 reinstallation. It's the first time that's ever happened in my experience; in the past when I have upgraded Windows, I've reinstalled everything.

In any case, they promised I'd get a free copy of W10 Home Edition, but I was upgrading from W7 Ultimate, and it says I now have W10 Pro. So far, so good; I'm posting this from my new W10 installation.

iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Aug 8, 2015 3:45 PM

Top-ranking reply

sorl

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Aug 15, 2015 5:45 PM

I also have the same model and upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 without too many issues initially. I only had to reinstall the drivers for my keyboard to get the volume keys to work again. I was also pleased to find that my gpu drivers had been updated from 14.3 to 15.something – one week older than the 15.7.1 currently available. I was able to further update to 15.7.1 by manually updating the drivers by downloading the file then going to device manager -> display adapter -> update driver using files on computer.

However yesterday while using Edge – and later Chrome – to download some large files Windows kept crashing; I'm using Wifi to connect to the Internet. Files of 256MB were fine but 500MB resulted in IRQL_Unexpected_Value crash (not sure of where the exact cut off point is between the two file sizes). Up until then I didn't notice any internet issues as my Steam and Origin games updated themselves and I played online. Either everything was being broken down into smaller packets – which is likely – or something broke in the last few days. After spending several hours trying to figure out how to open and read the memory dump files from the crash it appeared to be an issue with the Qualcomm Atheros drivers which were still dated from 2010. I then spent several more hours trying to find official site for updates, but apparently Qualcomm can't be bothered with that. I had to finally settle on https://www.atheros.cz/ as my source of drivers for the AR938x and updated to version 10.0.0.308. As of now downloading large files appears to work.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has run into the same issue.

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86 replies

Nov 10, 2015 8:40 AM in response to Loner T

Ahem, two last questions: Do you have set the virtual machine to the same number of processor cores than the real bootcamp, or has your virtual machine less cores (my bootcamp has 8 cores / 16 threads, the fusion session is set to 4 threads).

greetings from germany

Chris

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Nov 10, 2015 10:46 AM in response to Christian Stueben

Christian Stueben wrote:

Ahem, one last question ... when you look at you win 10 bootcamp settings, compatibility, what is the hardware version you have set? For my productive win 7 i have set hardware version 11, the w7->w10 test installation has hardware version 12. Could this be the reason?

Can you post a screen shot, if possible?

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Nov 10, 2015 10:47 AM in response to Christian Stueben

BC VM is set to 1 core/8GB. BC runs 8 cores/16GB.

Nov 10, 2015 11:44 AM in response to Loner T

> Can you post a screen shot, if possible?

In the bootcamp settings Kompatibilität / Compatibility:

and according to your second posting it is not the number of cores.

greetings from germany

Chris

Loner T

Level 9

59,513 points

Nov 10, 2015 2:56 PM in response to Christian Stueben

In Fusion 5.x the compatibility is set to version 5 (the default), and there is no hardware version.

Nov 10, 2015 10:53 PM in response to Loner T

> In Fusion 5.x the compatibility is set to version 5 (the default)

Hi Loner,

deep sigh, so it will be a long waiting until someone will post a solution in the vmware or parallels forum. And i don´t believe that microsoft will change the hardware footprint recognition so that it will fit a dual boot 😠

Thank you for your help and support 🙂

Hmm, maybee, i dont know how far Apple and Microsoft cooperate for bootcamp sessions. Maybee there is a chance that Apple talks to Microsoft that there is a need for bootcamp/virtual dual boot for the gwx update version of win 10. Pleaaaaase!

greetings from germany

Chris

Nov 10, 2015 11:20 PM in response to Christian Stueben

A very last word...

i have now made a request in the microsoft forum, if someone wants to observe:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-windows_install/win- 10-dual-boot-option-for-bootcamp-and-virtual/3b44f276-de86-420a-840b-e7763f847a9 f?tm=1447226320493

greetings from germany

Chris

Dec 18, 2015 9:51 AM in response to Zippy The Pinhead

Another update. W10 Pro Build 1511 (the "November Update") just installed itself a few days ago. Everything went smoothly.

It is getting close to 3 months of W10 Pro running under El Capitan, and for the most part I have no complaints. There are occasionally little infelicities-- a USB drive that won't eject, that sort of thing-- but after five months of W10 use, I am glad I upgraded. From my perspective there is a lot to like with W10.

Dec 26, 2015 6:28 AM in response to Zippy The Pinhead

Hi Zippy,

Thanks for giving me some hope.

I too have a Mid 2011 iMac 27". But having a lot of problems installing it.

Skipping the problems i have i'm down to two.

Firstly the sound driver doesn't work. Could you send me a link to the one you used?

Secondly i'm getting a random KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_ERROR like the following. A good old BSOD. 🙂

https://neosmart.net/wiki/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/07/KERNEL_SECURITY_CHE CK_ERROR.jpg

The two problems might be interconnected. 🙂

Hope you can help. 🙂

Dec 27, 2015 3:23 PM in response to Allansgroove

I'm probably the least qualified respondent in the thread to offer advice, and you're asking me to clearly recollect what I did about four months ago, when I have a hard time remembering what I did yesterday. As I indicated in the OP, when I did this I had a USB drive with the very latest drivers on it inserted into the machine. I wish I could tell you that was the decisive factor, but I actually have no idea. As you can read, I was also running Yosemite at the time, whereas now the machine is running El Capitan on the OS X side, and I can't even tell you what version of BCA it's running, as I am posting this from W10.

I think it is entirely possible that the fact I was upgrading from a recently reinstalled W7 system may have been a factor, but again, the depth of my ignorance is such that I really can't say. It seems the range of experiences with this upgrade varies considerably, as you can read in many threads. I just stumbled upon this one while perusing this subforum, for example.

Dec 27, 2015 6:20 PM in response to Zippy The Pinhead

I'm on the OS X side now, and I can see I am running BCA 6.0.1, though I had my initial success with a previous version.

When you run BCA, if you "continue" in for a screen or two, you will see a checkbox that allows you to "Download the latest Windows support software from Apple," which is the link I used for the drivers (on the USB drive) referenced previously. Hope that helps...

Guniyaz

Level 1

0 points

Dec 28, 2015 1:39 AM in response to WFauchey

Here are the steps that work on Macbook Pro 13" early 2011 El Capitani

-Use bootcamp and install windows 8.1, you must have a windows 8.1 boot cd to do this

-Again use bootcamp to download latest windows support software to a usb (use disk utility to erase the flash drive and chose MS DOS FAT and Master Boot Record (under scheme)

-Once Windows 8.1 is successfully installed, insert the usb and run the bootcamp windows support software, bootcamp and all support drivers will be installed.

-The trick comes here:

Don't do a clean windows 10 installation, simply use the Microsoft Windows 10 download Tool.(choose 64 bit version)

Link:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/1/9083501/microsoft-windows-10-update-download-ho w-to-guide

-Launch the tool and ℹWindows 10 will start downloading, and once it's ready you'll be presented with three options: keep personal files and apps, keep personal files only, and nothing. Select the first option (keep personal files and apps) to ensure your PC upgrades and you keep your files and applications. Windows 10 will start installing and after a few reboots and customizations you'll be upgraded.

-This procedure has worked for me on the MacBooks that I have worked on, it should work for you guys as well😎.

csrcsr

Level 1

4 points

Jan 1, 2016 11:01 AM in response to Renedric

How are you getting on?

I also have a 27 inch iMac 2011 and have divided it into Mac and a bootcamp partition (running Windows 7 32 bit)

What seems to be the suggested solution to update the bootcamp part to Win is to NOT do a clean install ... BUT ...

what I want to do is to do a clean install of the Bootcamp by cleaning the Windows partition completely and installing Win7 64 bit from the original CD set and THEN try to do an update to Win 10.

This means tidying everything up and ensuring all data is backed up on the Windows side including access to all downloaded progs etc - seems quite a workup and not sure if necessary

Have you any thoughts?

CSR

pakapple

Level 1

5 points

Jan 7, 2016 6:08 AM in response to sorl

Hi Sorl,

You are absolutely correct about BCA drivers and I followed your tip to resolve the issue of keyboard functions with Win 10.

Thanks.

MBP8,1 Early 2011, 13 inch

El Capitan 10.11.2 with Win 10 (Bootcamp)

Jan 27, 2016 3:37 PM in response to Zippy The Pinhead

Has anyone solved the internal Optical Drive issue. I've performed a clean install and an upgrade from WIN7 but bootcamp lacks the driver for some reason…

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