Windows 10 on MacBook Pro Mid 2010 13"

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!

You installed the 32-bit version of the OS, while I used the 64-bit version. It appears my method only works in the 64-bit version, while yours works for the 32-bit. Thank you for updating the thread, now this tutorial is complete for both versions.

Happy computing.

So the video drivers from Windows Update work without problems? They are broken on my end.

Yep, I haven't encountered problems with any of the 32-bit Apple drivers, including the video, though I haven't used it extensively since upgrading to Windows 10. I checked and the date on the Nvidia driver on my system is Oct 13, 2015.

It's interesting that the 64-bit driver installation was so much more problematic - did you try using setup.exe in the driver package? I'd normally be inclined to re-upgrade to the 64-bit version, but your experience is a bit of a deterrent. Hopefully Nvidia will improve their driver soon.

The driver provided by Apple is just fine, the problem I had was that Windows Update kept forcing the 2015 driver on my machine, which resulted in corrupt graphics (something I observed in XP, 7, and 8 as well with the 2015/2014 drivers).

Let us know if things keep working well for you. W10 has been very stable for me since I ironed out all the kinks.

daodats wrote:

Please see the article for guiding: https://codexpltd.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/install-windows-10-on-macbook-pro-mid -2010

What are the steps to resolve black screen and no bootable device issues when you boot from the USB? 😉

Using the Bootcamp Info.plist modifications may work for some models, but does not work for all. 2011 Models support USB boot partially. 2012 Macs support much better, 2013 fully support USB boot. What may work for one user, does not work for all. Users on 2010 Macs have new issues.

Unless there is a problem with Mac hardware (broken Optical drive), such modifications are unnecessary.

Hi,

I had freshly installed from scratch El Capitan on MBP 17" Mid 2010. I went through BootCamp Assistant to configure and install Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit to which I had a key and activated the installation (BootCamp 5.1.5769). I did nothing special other than the steps below.

Once all - absolutely all - recommended and optional updates (other than language packs - I'm using US English) were installed plus the NVIDIA provided reference driver for the graphics (which is identified as NVIDIA 330M), and the system was stable I clicked the Windows 10 upgrade offer from the tray. The pre-install check stated that the Bluetooth wouldn't be supported. I clicked continue and Windows 10 Professional 64 bit installed.

I ran Windows Update a few times after and a few updates were installed. I also reapplied the reference driver. I thought audio was out but after a jump over to You Tube, I can confirm audio works though I don't think the keyboard audio control buttons are functional.

Windows Device Manager shows that there is a problem with Bluetooth. Otherwise, there system seems stable through several reboots and switches back to OS X and then back to Windows. My Windows 10 shows activated and if I want, I should be able to fresh install Win10 via ISO image of the Win10 install DVD at some later time and retain activation status.

I haven't tried to fiddle with the Bluetooth. If anyone can or has more knowledge about the Bluetooth subsystem in these MBPs, I would be interested in learning about it. I can't say there is any possibility of successfully getting Bluetooth to work but I am willing to work at it a little harder. I have has some success on a Lenovo Q150 NetTop all-in-one once (twice, actually as I had to reload the box when I replaced the hard drive) where I managed to fiddle with a Win 7 driver for an Intel Card that was supported on Win 7 but not in Windows Homeserver 2011 (Windows Server 2008 under the covers) and get it to install and work flawlessly. It would be interesting to see what is different for the Bluetooth in Windows 10 compared to Windows 7, 8.0 and 8.1. I'm wondering if the API or something was rewritten or something.

So I grabbed the Bluetooth driver mentioned elsewhere on this thread and installed it. It looks like it works. The Bluetooth device shows working now and the icon is in the tray. I have successfully paired headphones and played audio through it. I cant use the Audio buttons on the keyboard and the keyboard backlight remains on. I'll look at that soon.