Windows 10 on MacBook Pro Mid 2010 13"

Since I have used these forums many times and found them very helpful, I hope I can help someone in turn.

x64 (and probably x86) Windows 10 runs fine on the 2010 13" MacBook Pro (well, as well as it can with a Core 2 Duo and 6GB of RAM). However, it is a little involved.

What you need prepared (on a flash drive perhaps):

1) Boot Camp 5.1.5769

2) NVidia 327.23 Drivers

3) Three files from the Apple support package for Windows 7 (you can download the package through boot camp assistant, or from somewhere on Apple's web site): AppleKeyboardInstaller64.exe, AppleMultiTouchTrackPadInstaller64.exe, and the NVidia directory (with NVidiaChipset and Win7 folders inside).

4) If you want the LCD to display colors correctly, take the color profile from OS X.

The Steps:

1) Install Windows 10. You can trick boot camp assistant with a Windows 7 disc if you like to get the support package, or you can just do the partitioning yourself.

2) Do NOT connect to the internet, because Windows Update will force install a driver for the 320M that is broken (thanks, Microsoft).

3) Find bootcamp.msi, and run msiexec /i bootcamp.msi in an elevated cmd. Also run the trackpad and keyboard installer.

4) Watch Apple's drivers get installed.

5) Go to device manager, find the 2 problem devices, point the 'update driver' mechanism to the NVidia directory and watch your drivers get installed.

6) Install the NVidia 327.23 drivers and fix the color profile if you like.

7) This is the critical step: download the update blocker utility from Microsoft here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3073930. Connect to the internet and (quickly) run the utility and block the NVidia drivers from installing. Once they get onto your system, they will reinstall themselves over any other driver, which is what happened to me. If this happens to you, run DDU (display driver uninstaller) to get rid of the 2015 driver once and for all, reinstall the right driver, and block the update again. These drivers DO NOT WORK and will result in corrupt graphics, even in XP/7/whatever. You can tell if you have them by looking in device manager and looking at the driver date for the 320M. The right drivers are from 2013, and the bad drivers are from 2015.

8) We're not done yet. Apple's HFS drivers break some Windows 10 features (at the time of this writing) so go to windows/system32/drivers and rename AppleHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys to something else (AppleHFS_disabled.sys for example). You can access the HFS partition with some other utility, such as Paragon's free HFS extension, but I haven't tried it. For example, I couldn't access storage and apps & features in the settings panel with them enabled, it would crash.

9) Your text will be blurry in some applications because Windows tries to auto scale them because who knows. Set custom scaling to 100% in settings.

10) Disable ethernet because it causes huge DPC spikes. Re-enable when you're using it. Also disable the IR and bluetooth radios because they're useless. Also turn off auto brightness because it's equally pointless.

11) Reboot and you're done. I also disabled Microsoft's data collection through the registry: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\DataCollection\AllowTel emetry and change to 0, disabled start menu web search with a group policy and settings setting, and disabled the Windows Update service because I am not OK with MS installing whatever they like on my computer given their track record. I also did a few other tweaks like disabling cortana and removing live tiles from the start menu, but that's up to you. I also disabled automatic driver updating (which didn't do anything because WU does what it likes), removed the "Windows 10 Education Edition" watermark with the Universal Watermark Disabler, and disabled "occasionally show suggestions in start menu," all of which are speed tweaks which help running 10 on a C2D.

12) If you happen to use Norton, and have exhausted your licenses due to reinstalling Windows, the client has a bug that will hang on activation in 10. Pick a preferred web browser in settings, run activation and you'll be good.

13) Change the background from a boring Windows window.

Everything works, including trackpad, backlight, iSight, whatever. Windows 10 runs as well as it would on any other 5 year old computer. I can't afford a new computer and I need Windows for some school work. 10 is free and the start screen is the dumbest idea since the 9x core.

Great post. I'm assuming you installed win 10 via DVD in optical drive.

My optical drive has gone bad. Found out workaround to install through USB EFI. but in this case while installing the NVIDA 327.28 drives the windows crashes.

Read somewhere that it needs to be installed by BIOS CSM. With a broken optical drive, any suggestions?

sidbidus wrote:

Read somewhere that it needs to be installed by BIOS CSM. With a broken optical drive, any suggestions?

You will need to use Fusion and Winclone as a work around. See this link as a reference.

If you installed the Windows Update driver for the 320M, you will have graphical corruption sooner or later, probably in the start menu. The fact that the 327 Nvidia driver didn't install suggests that something is different. Mind posting a msinfo32.exe screenshot? Here's mine.

Here you go.

Looks like there is a bit of variation in the reported OS name though the version is the same. Mine is reporting that it's an X86-based PC, while yours shows X64-based PC. That may have something to do with our different results.

So i gave rEFIt a try and the still getting the crash on NVIDIA installation. Maybe i didn't use rEFIt correctly.

So i started by installing rEFIt but did not get any boot option on restarting. Found out i need to run enable.sh command for it to work.

After that, with the win10 usb, i got the rEFIt menu but only with os x option.

After that i restarted the mac and pressed the alt key so i got the menu with rEFIt as an option.

On pressing rEFIt option, i got the boot menu, where i installed win10 from the third option. the last option gave me a black screen with blinking hyphen sign. The blinking kept going on for 10-15 mins so i restarted.

Now after installing windows, i get the refit menu on booting mac. so i thought i'll try to install again win10 since i'm getting the refit menu directly. Now the fourth option, without usb tell me no bootable device and with usb inserted, i see the black screen again with - sign.

Any ideas where i have gone wrong?

It seems, winclone is the only option left. But don't feel like spending $30 for it.

can't find the option to edit the previous post. so posting again

On pressing rEFIt option, i got the boot menu, where i installed win10 from the third option. the last option gave me a black screen with blinking hyphen sign. The blinking kept going on for 10-15 mins so i restarted.

Your hardware will not support W10. Please see Use Windows 10 on your Mac with Boot Camp - Apple Support and the section Mac computers that support Windows 10 .

I have a macbook pro 15" 2010 and windows 10 works fine. You just need to "repair" the bootcamp drivers tool for your macbook, meaning you just run the installation again

Hi, I am replying to you from a mid 2010 mac book pro 13, using Windows 10 in Boot Camp.

I upgraded from windows 7 Ultimate.. My boot camp version is 4.0. The only two issues I am experiencing are. 1) The keyboard light cannot be controlled and 2) The screen brightness cannot be adjusted from the keyboard, everything else works great; Microsoft has outdone themselves with this OS.

If you are willing to try, I suggest you check your boot camp version and update to 4.0 if needed...

Overall win 10 in boot camp works great!

Hope this helps

p.s If you upgrade to Win 10 DO NOT attempt to update Boot Camp (you can adjust keyboard for secondary click or adjust screen brightness in Boot Camp), I did, and I had to delete Boot Camp entirely, re-install win 7 and then re-install win 10

because when I messed with it after installing windows 10 I had no light on the keyboard.. now I do.. just can't adjust.

Of course, I hope they help someone.

I forgot to mention that to install Windows updates, simply re-enable Windows Update (every week or so) by going to services and changing startup from disabled to manual, start it, and have it update itself. Then turn it off again. You can also block updates with the blocker utility if you like. Just don't run Windows without updating for years, it's not OS X.

Arg, I forgot that even the good drivers have a critical bug in them that 1) produces very high DPC lag rendering Windows unusable for real-time audio with the 320M (in ANY version of Windows) and 2) frequent BSODs from switching performance states. Both of these problems stem from the chip's power saving features, because forcing the card under a load (playing a DVD movie or game for example) drops the DPC numbers back to low (admirably low) numbers. Left unchecked, these sloppy DPCs can and will cause frequent DPC Watchdog BSODs (confirmed by me across 7, 8.1, and now 10).

The 2nd of these problems can be cured by going into the registry HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\The folder with a 0000 and a 0001 with a bunch of keys in each. Insert a binary value with the name 'OverrideMaxPerf' in 0000 or 0001, and set it to 03 00 00 00. This locks the card in it's highest power state (or at least it's supposed to). 02 00 00 00 locks it in low power 3D, 01 ... 2D etc. This stops the BSODs (but not the stuttering audio due to the driver's latency).

If you want to do audio work, the only workaround is to temporarily disable the NVidia driver.

Thank you for the detailed post! Can you please specify which version of bootcamp.msi to use? I've tried the one that comes with BootCamp 5.1.5769 and it results in an error about the installation package not being supported by this processor type. I've also tried the one that comes with the Win 7 Drivers I found (BootCamp4.0.4033) and it causes an error saying I need to be running Windows 7.

Thanks!

How did you run bootcamp.msi? You have to run it from an administrator command prompt as in step 3. Right click on the command prompt shortcut and choose 'run as administrator.' Then navigate to the bootcamp.msi directory and type msiexec /i bootcamp.msi.

I did run the command prompt as an administrator, though I couldn't figure out how to get a right click before I got Apple's touchpad driver installed, so I launched it in Task Manager and selected the Run as Administrator option. If I used msiexec from the Boot Camp 5.1.5769 package, I get the "can't run on this PC" error message.

What I eventually did was to run setup.exe from the Boot Camp drivers 4.0.4033 package (available here: support.apple.com/en-us/HT205016 -- scroll down to the mid-2010 13" MacBook Pro line and click the "4" in the Windows 7 64 bit column to download). The trick was to run setup in Windows 7 compatibility mode. To do this, I extracted the drivers from the .zip file, single-clicked on setup.exe, which brings up Application Tools / Manage at the top of the Windows Explorer window, then selected Troubleshoot Compatibility, then Run in Windows 7 mode. Everything seemed to install fine, and everything I've checked works. The only minor issue is the touchpad scrolling works the opposite of how it does in OS X. Perhaps there's a setting somewhere to fix this.

I didn't have any luck with the suggested Nvidia driver - said it's not compatible, but my display seems to be working fine with the 320M driver.

Thanks for your original post - it got me to look for the older Boot Camp drivers, which did the trick!