win 10 driver for early 2009 Macbook w/ onboard nVidia 9400m

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Level 1

6 points

win 10 driver for early 2009 Macbook w/ onboard nVidia 9400m

Looks to me that my machine is too early to make the cut for bootcamp6 but I took the chance and upgraded to win10 anyway. Thanks to help here I managed to install win7 via older bootcamp software with no problem:

Re: bootcamp support software which version for early 2009 macbook?

But after upgrading to win10, while it looks like things are LARGELY working except I get this exclamation mark on my GPU within win10 device manager so may I check w/ the experts here if anyone got the GPU working perfectly? Here's the setup:

early 2009 13" MacBook white w/ Core2 Duo 2.0Ghz, 4Gb DDR2-667 ram, GeForce 9400M GPU, upgraded 128Gb SSD running Yosemite 10.10.5 w/ Bootcamp 5.1.4.

I first installed win7 w/ bootcamp and subsequently updated to win7SP1. At that point, I got a perfect device manager, i.e. no warning/error. I then subsequently upgraded to win10. I think I lost 'some' functionalities such as the F10, F11, F12 volume keys are not working within win10 anymore. But I'm more concerned that within win10 Device Manager, my GPU got an exclamation mark! "A driver (service) for this device has been disabled, An alternate driver may be providing this functionality (Code 32)"

I was prompted earlier by NVidia about installation of the latest driver. But looking at device manager, my driver is still dated 29 Jun 2015....

Any clue/pointer would be much appreciated.

MacBook, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), Early 2009 Macbook White

Posted on Aug 28, 2015 12:35 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Teutone

Level 1

4 points

Oct 25, 2015 12:54 PM in response to Loner T

I tried all drivers that worked under Windows 7 - official Bootcamp 4 driver and the Nvidia 340.52 ... all result in crash/auto-reboot after the Windows bootlogo. Any other ideas?

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Answer 2

Feeh

Level 1

8 points

Mar 17, 2017 1:35 PM in response to Teutone

It is possible to change the screen brightness using this startup.nsh script?
I've been able to boot on Windows 10 on my MBW (Macbook5,2) with latest NVidia drivers but the screen brightness is locked, both windows settings under power management and fn keys are disabled/not working. But the volume keys are ok

There is anyway to change the screen brightness?

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Answer 3

Teutone

Level 1

4 points

Oct 7, 2015 8:11 PM in response to alecela

I experience a similar problem, until now not a single Nvidia driver works for my setup: same Macbook as OP: Early 2009 Macbook White 13'' with Nvidia 9400M graphics card.

If I let Windows Update install the 341.71 driver upon restart I get into a bootloop and the machine would not even get to the log-in screen - it crashes before that, right after the windows boot logo. The same happens with the newer Nvidia driver 341.81 downloaded from nvidia.com ... any hint / tip would be greatly appreciated!

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Answer 4

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Oct 8, 2015 5:40 AM in response to Teutone

W10 is officially unsupported on the 2009 Macs. Using newer drivers will cause more problems. Can you re-install the original Bootcamp drivers that are meant for the Mac using Administrative rights and compatibility for the driver to be W7/W8 as appropriate?

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Answer 5

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Oct 25, 2015 1:38 PM in response to Teutone

Does the generic VGA driver work properly?

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Answer 6

Teutone

Level 1

4 points

Oct 25, 2015 7:53 PM in response to Loner T

yes, the VGA adapter works with the Mircosoft driver "Microsoft Basic Adapter" - but I can not use the functions / benefits of the graphics card... and have to prevent auto update by stupid Windows Update that always tries to install non-working Nvidia drivers... I think I managed to switch that off in System Settings at least (System -> Hardware -> Control Hardware Installation)

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Answer 7

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Oct 26, 2015 3:05 AM in response to Teutone

Your Early 2009 Macbook only supports W7 32-bit based on Install Windows 7 and earlier on your Mac using Boot Camp - Apple Support .

MacBook

Mac model	Windows 7 64-bit	Windows 7 32-bit	Windows Vista 64-bit	Windows Vista 32-bit	Windows XP 32-bit
MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009)	4	4	DVD	DVD	DVD
MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2009)	-	4	-	DVD	DVD
MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009)	-	4	-	DVD	DVD

What is the possibility of going back to W7 32-bit and a clean installation?

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Answer 8

Teutone

Level 1

4 points

Feb 28, 2016 11:45 PM in response to alecela

Found the solution

Followed the information found @Superuser

You're probably (U)EFI Booting Windows on your Macbook.

"Technical info: While Windows 8 no longer expects an EFI system to have VGA-compatible video, Nvidia drivers apparently still do and crash if they don’t detect it. The above commands are supposed to enable the VGA support in the graphics card."

I'm writing this from Windows on my Macbook 5,2 with Nvidia 9400m running latest Nvidia Driver 341.92

You have to boot your Windows from an EFI shell, for example following this guide: BetterThanBootcamp GUIDE reddit

and add these lines to your startup.nsh so that it looks like this:

mm 0010003E 1 ;PCI :8

mm 02000004 1 ;PCI :7

fs0:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi

Works great! All credits to

kinokijuf for sharing this great workaround with us.

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