Windows 10 bootcamp on a mid-2011 iMac?

I could update from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 10 Home without problem on a Mid 2011 MacBook Air, following Apple officially not supported.

Bootcamp in Windows 10 didn't see the Mac Disk, so it was not possible to switch Startvolume directly in Win10. The rest worked well, problems with sound etc.

BIG problem: even I can start without any problems doing a reboot cycle, PARALLELS 13 and its predecessors detect correctly there is a Win10 installed, but if it comes to start the BootCamp partition, Parallels fails by and says "no boot device available". Not very customer friendly, not by Apple, nor by Parallels 😟➖➖➖➖ By the way: The support from Parallels is sub-zero. Kinda "make it impossible for the customer to contact support easily".

According to http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/index-imac.html none of the mid-2011 iMacs are compatible with Windows 10 only 8.1.

Unless you really need W8.1/W10, since you have a valid license for W7, consider re-installing W7. It is very unlikely that Apple will provide drivers for older Macs.

I personally prefer W7 over W8.1. W10 is fine on PCs but has quite a few challenges on older Macs due to drivers, and newer Macs (2014/2015) due to drivers, too. W7's stability is preferable over an unstable W10.

This is a user to user discussion area so no one here knows what Apple's plan are. However I would hazard a guess that adding capability to a 4 year old machine for another company's OS which was released this year, isn't high on Apple's todo list.

If I were to use your logic, everyone should be mad at car manufacturers for making cars in 2011 which do not support Google's autonomous driving capability.

doubt apple are working on making windows 10 drivers for older mac models

I got an iMac mid 2011 21" with windows 10 in bootcamp

when I got it it had Lion and I installed windows 7 in bootcamp since then I've upgraded windows from within windows first with a digital exe upgrade to win8 then to win8.1 from windows app store and then to windows10 with the upgrade program

apart from no access to OS X drive from windows anymore then everything works just fine but that being said I never used the apple keyboard, I use a windows ms natural keyboard and a razer mouse sure I have the magic trackpad and it works ok but if every single gesture works I have no idea

What i have done with my mac pro 2010, which too doesnt support Win 10 (as apple says)...

Install Win 7 on a extra dedicated disc,

installed the bootcamp supplementary drivers,

made the complete windows 7 update, more than 200 patches,

then i did an upgrade to win 10 via gwx / media creation tool.

Works perfect on the unsupported mac.

The only negative is, that an upgraded windows 10 only can be activated for bootcamp OR fusion / parallels.

greetings from germany

Chris

I do have w10 via bootcamp on a mid 11 iMac, too.
Had the BsoD with Bad_Pool_Header for some days now, but eventually was able to locate a new AMD/Intel driver (for Graphics) as source of the issue.
Rolling back to the old driver did work....... but w10 installed the new one, again. 😉

Hopefully, I did find a solution (got a german version, so maybe I won't get all the words right):

Go to System Features (Systemeigenschaften) / Hardware, where you'll find a buttton called Device Installation Settings (Geräteinstallationseinstellungen).
There you can stop w10 from automatically installing new drivers.

Then, I found an MS tool called wushowhide.diagcab to 'hide' updates causing problems.
Using this tool, you can disable certain drivers/updates.
That seems to do the trick.

..or so I hope.. 😉

...and by the way,
I managed to run w7 on a MacPro 2006 (with processor upgrade) via Bootcamp, about 1.5 years ago, all the time working fine.
And did the w10 update on it recently, too, but returned to w7 for matters of reliability.

However, installation took about 2 days & nights of trial & error; at the end I just installed w7 natively on an empty ssd (took out the others before).

Lucky me, the MacPro AND Bootcamp decided (after pushing in the other Harddrives) to recognize both startup volumes.

🙂

Good Luck!

...little update: after about 20 restarts, no BSoD.. 😀

For the record, I'm posting this from W10 running on my mid-2011 iMac, and as you can read in this other thread, so far so good. I also installed W10 on a family member's Mid-2011 iMac, and though there have been some errors, it does seem to be running OK at the moment.

Win 10 working on my 2011 Mid-iMac, although wireless keyboard doesn't seem to be supported (no bluetooth drivers seem to work). I get the Bad_Pool_Header maybe 30% of the time I boot into Win10 (only had Win10 installed one day, and it seems to be less frequently- I assume it has to do with peripheral drivers not playing nice).

Anyway, I'm going to go back to Win7, didn't realize I wasn't supported, but it definitely works... a bit.

same here, w10 is running smooth & fine.
iMac mid2011 4x3.4 16GB

But the wushowhide was definitely essential, for me.
No Bluescreens for 2 days now, with lots of restarts. 🙂

Obviously, the latest drivers are just not compatible.
...and I do use wired Mouse & Keys.
Bluetooth has a very obvious questionmark (Hardware)

I seem to have gotten windows 10 running almost perfect. no bad pool headers or restarts. GPU work perfect so does bluetooth. Only flaw i seem to have is the volume buttons on my wireless mac keyboard doesn't control the volume on windows (first world problems huh? lol). Instead of upgrading from windows 7 to 10 i basically installed a fresh iso copy and installed some drivers individually. Still not sure what driver causes the bad pool headers but it has something to do with one of the drivers from the windows 7 bootcamp instalation. Windows seems to install its own driver for the gpu so thats already working.

Once you're happy with your newley installed windows 10 go ahead and open open up your Apple Boot Camp Drivers Folder. Go to Drivers>Apple.

Go ahead and install these drivers individually to your liking. DO NOT INSTALL THE BOOTCAMP SETUP!!!! If you're using a 64 bit version of windows then click on the x64 folder for those drivers.Go ahead and install whatever else you fell you need. If anyone finds the source of the pad pool header let us know.

Hello!

Sorry for my English so bad, but I'm using google translation to write. Tell me if I got my start Windows 10 in mid-2011 iMac I had a lot of trouble to get it, because, use El Capitan. THROUGH did a youtube video. It is in Spanish but not very difficult to do. If you understand more or less the Spanish think you will not be difficult.

The Video is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcqUiaZtFS0

I hope I've been helpful. If so I'm really happy for you and me. Thanks for reading and good luck!