Download Windows 10 On 2011 Mac

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GIMP for Windows. Updated on 2020-06-11: GIMP 2.10.20 installer revision 1 Slightly faster and smaller due to optimized build parameters Download GIMP 2.10.20 via BitTorrent Download GIMP 2.10.20 directly. The download links above will attempt to download GIMP from one of our trusted mirror servers. I have a mid 2011 imac. Windows 10 is not officially supported on bootcamp so i decided on 8.1 instead. Everything worked in the end and once it was installed I manually went into my files and begin the driver setup. Every driver works perfectly except the sound drivers.

  1. Mac Theme For Windows 10
  2. Windows 10 For Mac Free

What you need to install Windows 10 on Mac

  • MacBook introduced in 2015 or later
  • MacBook Air introduced in 2012 or later
  • MacBook Pro introduced in 2012 or later
  • Mac mini introduced in 2012 or later
  • iMac introduced in 2012 or later1
  • iMac Pro (all models)
  • Mac Pro introduced in 2013 or later

The latest macOS updates, which can include updates to Boot Camp Assistant. You will use Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows 10.

64GB or more free storage space on your Mac startup disk:

  • Your Mac can have as little as 64GB of free storage space, but at least 128GB of free storage space provides the best experience. Automatic Windows updates require that much space or more.
  • If you have an iMac Pro or Mac Pro with 128GB of memory (RAM) or more, your startup disk needs at least as much free storage space as your Mac has memory.2

An external USB flash drive with a storage capacity of 16GB or more, unless you're using a Mac that doesn't need a flash drive to install Windows.

A 64-bit version of Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro on a disk image (ISO) or other installation media. If installing Windows on your Mac for the first time, this must be a full version of Windows, not an upgrade.

  • If your copy of Windows came on a USB flash drive, or you have a Windows product key and no installation disc, download a Windows 10 disk image from Microsoft.
  • If your copy of Windows came on a DVD, you might need to create a disk image of that DVD.

How to install Windows 10 on Mac

To install Windows, use Boot Camp Assistant, which is included with your Mac.

1. Use Boot Camp Assistant to create a Windows partition

Open Boot Camp Assistant, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. Then follow the onscreen instructions.

  • If you're asked to insert a USB drive, plug your USB flash drive into your Mac. Boot Camp Assistant will use it to create a bootable USB drive for Windows installation.
  • When Boot Camp Assistant asks you to set the size of the Windows partition, remember the minimum storage-space requirements in the previous section. Set a partition size that meets your needs, because you can't change its size later.

2. Format the Windows (BOOTCAMP) partition

When Boot Camp Assistant finishes, your Mac restarts to the Windows installer. If the installer asks where to install Windows, select the BOOTCAMP partition and click Format. In most cases, the installer selects and formats the BOOTCAMP partition automatically.

3. Install Windows

Unplug any external devices that aren't necessary during installation. Then click Next and follow the onscreen instructions to begin installing Windows.

4. Use the Boot Camp installer in Windows

After Windows installation completes, your Mac starts up in Windows and opens a ”Welcome to the Boot Camp installer” window. Follow the onscreen instructions to install Boot Camp and Windows support software (drivers). You will be asked to restart when done.

  • If the Boot Camp installer never opens, open the Boot Camp installer manually and use it to complete Boot Camp installation.
  • If you have an external display connected to a Thunderbolt 3 port on your Mac, the display will be blank (black, gray, or blue) for up to 2 minutes during installation.

How to switch between Windows and macOS

Restart, then press and hold the Option (or Alt) ⌥ key during startup to switch between Windows and macOS.

Audio

Learn more

If you have one of these Mac models using OS X El Capitan 10.11 or later, you don't need a USB flash drive to install Windows:

  • MacBook introduced in 2015 or later
  • MacBook Air introduced in 2017 or later3
  • MacBook Pro introduced in 2015 or later3
  • iMac introduced in 2015 or later
  • iMac Pro (all models)
  • Mac Pro introduced in late 2013

To remove Windows from your Mac, use Boot Camp Assistant, not any other utility.

For more information about using Windows on your Mac, open Boot Camp Assistant and click the Open Boot Camp Help button.

1. If you're using an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014) or iMac (27-inch, Late 2013) or iMac (27-inch, Late 2012) with a 3TB hard drive and macOS Mojave or later, learn about an alert you might see during installation.

2. For example, if your Mac has 128GB of memory, its startup disk must have at least 128GB of storage space available for Windows. To see how much memory your Mac has, choose Apple menu  > About This Mac. To see how much storage space is available, click the Storage tab in the same window.

3. These Mac models were offered with 128GB hard drives as an option. Apple recommends 256GB or larger hard drives so that you can create a Boot Camp partition of at least 128GB.

Yes, that’s correct. It’s possible to install and have perfectly running copy of Windows 10 on this extremely old early-2011 MacBook Pro, even though Apple latest BootCamp 6 doesn’t officially support this hardware.

⚠ [Update 2017-05-08]: Additionally I was able to extend its memory to 16GB and replace the internal drive with Samsung SSD 860 Evo to give it maximum performance.

Was it easy? YES! and NO! (explained in Long Story below)

Was it worth? YES!

The transition was fairly simple. However some initial configuration is required, i.e. I already had latest Windows 8.1 installed on a secondary hard drive of this MacBook Pro. Then, when the time had come, I simply hit the ‘Upgrade To Windows 10’ button. Windows did the dirty work, rebooted few times and after completion of the whole procedure I had Windows 10 starting up. Of course without the ability to use correctly the keyboard (F-keys) and without the way of turning off the machine (it only rebooted instead), with only possibility to sleep it. Beside that all other stuff was working more-less OK. Few days later I found that repairing BootCamp 5.1 (as suggested here), without even using ‘compatibility mode’ would help and I can confirm – it fixed all broken features.

Good job Microsoft and thanks for such a good experience! I have never been happier, when moving from one Windows to another.

Long story.

Really long story, full of midnight joys started the next day I bough this MacBook in the middle of 2011. I had this brilliant idea of making upgrades myself. First I replaced original RAM, put 8GB (max for this model) and seen a little performance boost. Next I replaced the harddrive with a brand new WD Caviar Black with 750GB / 7200rpm and got extra space. Then I installed Windows 7 (using BootCamp). That was an astonishing moment. No one could actually understand, why dare I to buy MacBook and primarly use Windows on it to execute BlackBerry development ;). But that was their problem, not mine. I could perform any type of required mobile-dev at that time using this single machine, while travelling etc.

In 2013, when my desktop PCs were already using SSD drives, I tried to apply similar approach to this MacBook (as RAM was sufficient and i5 processor is powerfull enough for development), where initialization of Windows 7 with lots of bad stuff onboard could consume few very long minutes. Beside, there was a next version of Windows on the horizon. And this started all my problems.

I purchased Plextor 256GB SSD, also equipped myself with a dedicated bay for disk and external case for DVD and followed iFixIt guide to replace the optical drive. Brilliant! at least until I found out I can’t simply insert Windows 8 DVD and install it, as this MacBook has a limitation of not installing Windows from an external drive!! First time I spot such a shortsighted from Apple engineers. Second demotivation was OSX kernel, which had TRIM permanently turned off for all SSD drives, which were not bought from official Apple stores/resellers. That’s the worst kind of marketing I’ve ever seen. The third problem was an effort I already put in to alter the hardware itself (check the guide!). I wasted so much time with a screwdriver and closed the DVD in dedicated case, what I didn’t want to undo all and then redo few days later, to just execute another try. Beside that Windows 8 Pro was needed to let me continue Windows Phone tasks.

There are those moments in life, when you realize, there is no turning back and you must find THE solution and don’t even think about giving up. That became my motto and workaround for the third problem. Fixing second issue was also quite expected. Turning on TRIM can’t be simply done though system settings and requires a binary manipulation with some system files. There are plenty of apps that can do it, but even though I decided not to put OSX on SSD at all. Mostly since Apple doesn’t want me to do it. Additionally I presumed that 256GB disk might become kind a small, if I had to split it by half for MacOS and Windows. Windows plus Visual Studio and some SDKs could occupy more than 100GB itself, so let’s give all space to Windows.

The inability to install Windows became my nightmare then. I spent more than a week-long sleepless nights googling for a solution without anything successful. Until… I found that very smart cheat, which made it’s task! Thanks to severin, the true savior! My slightly updated solution was following:

  • Use BootCamp and configure this new SSD, mounted as the secondary disk in place of internal DVD drive as designated for Windows 8 installation.
  • Close BootCamp, umount created drives and allow any type of modifications over partitions on this disk by:
  • Then use VirtualBox (still on OSX) to create new virtual machine and initialize installation of Windows 8 from an external DVD or ISO image, but instead of using a local file for emulated PC’s storage, redirect it into a raw drive (created at previous steps).

  • Stop the installation process just at first reboot of virtual machine by turning off of that machine. At that time some files were already copied from Windows 8 installation disk, but the most importantly the created partition was marked as bootable and Microsoft boot-loader was installed.

  • Remove all files from Windows 8 partition, using any software capable of accessing NTFS file-system (like Tuxera or Paragon NTFS, both have trials) and then copy everything from the Windows 8 installation DVD in that place.

  • Install rEFInd (better fork of rEFIt) to be able to boot from that new Windows 8 partition.

  • Reboot MacBook with ALT key pressed. Select booting from Windows 8 partition and request installation again on the same partition! Notice that this time we are running on the real hardware, not inside virtual machine. Most importantly remember NOT to perform any format.

  • You might need to manually select that Windows 8 partition on reboots, but once installation is completed, you got almost ready Windows 8.

  • Being logged-in into Windows remove files copied from the installation DVD and install BootCamp 5.1 drivers dedicated to early-2011 MacBook Pro.HINT: They could be also written on an USB stick by BootCamp, when preparing the disk at step 1.

  • Being logged-in into OSX configure rEFInd to add permanent entry for Windows, or restore the original Apple’s UEFI boot-manager using:

  • Using BootCamp on Windows, it’s possible to change, which is the default OS for booting!

Some thoughts at the end – if you got just an ‘upgrade version of Windows 8’, you will need to execute all steps above using Windows 7 installation DVD. Then activate your Windows copy and finally do an upgrade. It will run smoothly, the same way as upgrade to Windows 10 as described on top. Using external DVD will work fine since it overwrites system only files and doesn’t need to care about any extra steps related to boot-managers and limitations of MacBook’s UEFI implementation.

And when I just see this procedure, I am curious, if installing rEFInd won’t actually let booting from external DVD drive and won’t simplify the whole process. But once I have all configured, I won’t revert it to try. Let me know, if you did!

Have a nice day!

Mac Theme For Windows 10

EDIT: 2017-05-08:

There is also an option to extend it to utilize 16GB of RAM, which I described here.

EDIT: 2019-05-31:

Windows 10 For Mac Free

This was a working great hardware and was serving me well. However due to CPU/GPU limitations (lack of Metal support) it was impossible to install latest macOS Mojave. And as of today I replaced it with a donblebook MBP-2018.

EDIT: 2020-03-24:

In case of keyboard or trackpad issues after Windows 10 upgrade to version 1809 or newer check here on this wordy guide, how to fix it.