win10 on mac pro late 2011

Since there have only been Mac Pro 2010, 2012 and 2013 models you probably have a 2010 model bought in 2011. As I have a Mac Pro 2010 and have successfully installed Windows 10 on it I can therefore confirm yes it is posibble.

However according to the current official Apple Boot Camp article here Use Windows 10 on your Mac with Boot Camp - Apple Support this is not supported.

I am guessing Apple changed the rules with the latest Boot Camp Assistant. You therefore may need to first prepare a drive using an older version of OS X with a correspondingly older version of Boot Camp Assistant, your 10.7.5 aka Lion is if anything too old, I would try 10.10.5 aka Yosemite.

• You will need to download the ISO image of Windows 10 from here https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO
• You will need an 8GB or bigger USB2 memory stick, it must not be a USB3 stick
• You will use Boot Camp Assistant to create a Windows partition
• You will then use Boot Camp Assistant to copy the ISO image on to the USB2 memory stick and make it bootable
• You will then boot from the USB2 stick and tell it to install on to the Windows partition, it will need to reformat it from FAT32 to NTFS, make sure you select the correct partition, you can do this by looking at the size of the partition and picking the one that matches the size you created

It should then hopefully do the install of Windows 10, after it has completed you can re-run Boot Camp Assistant and create another USB memory stick with the Boot Camp drivers on it, this can probably be USB3 since you will not be booting from it. Again here you may have a problem, it looks like the Boot Camp drivers for the Mac Pro 2010/2012 do not support Windows 10 so may not let you install them. See Boot Camp Support Software 5.1.5640

When I did mine it was quite a while ago whilst Windows 10 was still in pre-release form, I have since upgraded it to the latest.

Another approach you could try which will not work on newer Macs is that your Mac Pro has an optical drive connected via SATA. It should therefore be possible to 'burn' the Windows 10 ISO image to a DVD disc, in theory you can then boot from that and install it. This avoids two possible problems, first that the Boot Camp Assistant will reject converting the ISO to a bootable USB2 memory stick, and secondly the fact that other tools for converting ISO images to bootable USB memory sticks may not be able to do so in a form that works on a Mac.

This article talks you through bypassing Boot Camp Assistant. I would still advise creating a Windows partition using Boot Camp Assistant but to use Unetbootin to make the USB2 bootable stick. See http://fgimian.github.io/blog/2016/03/12/installing-windows-10-on-a-mac-without- bootcamp/

I take what I said back. Your Mac does not support Windows 10.

Use Windows 10 on your Mac with Boot Camp - Apple Support

As pointed out by dialabrain the MacBook Pro 2011 like the Mac Pro 2010/2012 also does not officially support installing Windows 10.

Since I did manage to get Windows 10 working on a Mac Pro 2010 it might be possible one way or the other to do the same on a MacBook Pro 2011 despite Apple saying no. The steps to try would be pretty much the same as the ones I suggested for a Mac Pro.

Assuming you are successful then you can can later upgrade the Mac side of your MacBook Pro to Sierra. I have checked and the MacBook Pro 2011 is officially Sierra compatible. Upgrading the Mac side will not affect an already installed Windows operating system.

As FatMac>MacPro said, you don't in many cases have to use Boot Camp but could instead use Parallels Desktop, or VMware Fusion or VirtualBox, all of these support Windows 10 on your Mac.

Do you actually have a Mac Pro, or do you have a MacBook Pro as your signature indicates, and “Mac Pro” was just an abbreviated reference to your MacBook Pro?

My two cents. It would make more sense to upgrade to Sierra again then install Windows 10. Unless you have to use Windows 7.

You don't necessarily need BootCamp to run Windows 7 and/or 10 on your Mac. You can create virtual machines using VMware Fusion, Parallels, or VirtualBox.