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Install Mac On Windows 8 1

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  1. Install Windows On Mac Free
  2. Install Mac On Windows 10
  3. Can You Install Mac On Windows
  4. Install Windows On Mac

Windows 8 arrives

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Open About this Mac in the Apple menu and verify that you have at least 8GB of memory. As i interpreted this, I believe what you want is not to run OS X natively in a dual boot or hackintosh configuration, but that you want to run OS X 'within' Windows. This is possible with The free VMWare player. Take a look at the various resul. The install process will start. If you happen to have a Windows 8 key but are installing Windows 8.1, your key won't work, use a generic key from here to get by the installation (you can change your product key once you have Windows running from Settings). When it gets to the list of partition you should see four of them. You want the last one.

For many Mac users who occasionally need to run Windows applications, virtualization solutions like Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion, and VirtualBox are often the best way to do so. You take a definite performance hit with virtualization programs, but for most people the ability to run the applications they need without rebooting is more than convenient enough to make up for such shortcomings.

There is one exception: gaming. 3D performance is either much-reduced by virtualization or (in the case of VirtualBox) completely non-existent, and given that most Macs don't have top-shelf graphics processors to begin with, there's simply no substitute for running Windows on bare metal, as they say.

This means using Boot Camp to install Windows on your Mac as you would to any PC, and that means relying on Apple's Windows drivers to get everything working properly. The issue is that Apple doesn't exactly prioritize Windows driver updates, and this is doubly true when a new version of Windows is concerned: Boot Camp support for Windows 7 trailed general availability by about three months, and the song remains the same for Windows 8.

But official support be damned, we say! We installed Windows 8 on our 2011 iMac and 2010 MacBook Air to see what happened, and we kept a log of our findings to help those of you who don't feel like waiting on Apple's drivers.

Setup process

Because we haven't talked about this in a while, let's take a gander at the Boot Camp installation process as it stands in Mountain Lion. Here's what you need:

  • A Mac that supports Mountain Lion and has at least 20GB of free disk space, though more is obviously preferable.
  • A valid Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro license key. For the purposes of this article, we're going to assume you're working with the 64-bit version of Windows (and at this point, you probably should be anyway).
  • If you're using a Mac with an optical drive or a MacBook Air older than the 2011 model, you'll need a Windows 8 install DVD (and, for the older Airs, an external optical drive).
  • If you're using a 2011 or 2012 MacBook Air or any other Mac without an optical drive, you'll need either an external optical drive and a Windows 8 install DVD, or a 4GB or larger USB stick and a Windows 8 ISO file. More on this in a bit.
  • A FAT-formatted external drive or blank CD or DVD on which to store the Windows driver files.

Once you've gathered the necessary materials, launch the Boot Camp Assistant from Spotlight or by navigating to Applications and then to Utilities. It will walk you through partitioning your drive to install Windows, downloading the necessary driver files to your external drive, and (for newer MacBook Airs, Retina MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Minis without optical drives), creating a USB installer for Windows from an ISO file.

Users of slightly older Macs, however, will notice that the installer still requires a Windows install DVD before it will start working, and the option to create a USB drive isn't even available—those with access to an optical drive cannot opt to use any other method. Strangely, this requirement applies even to 2010, 2009, and 2008-era MacBook Airs, all of which shipped without optical drives; people with those computers will have to find an external optical drive before continuing.

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After formatting your drive, let the Boot Camp Assistant reboot your computer, and install Windows to your newly created Boot Camp partition as you would to any PC. When going through the installer, be sure to reformat the Boot Camp partition to NTFS, but don't delete it—this will break the partition and require you to start over again from the beginning.

These days, the Windows installer is dead simple to get through as long as you're not terrified of technology—enter your product key and create a user account and you've done most of the heavy lifting. Once you reach the Start screen, insert the external drive containing the Windows support files, navigate to it from the desktop, and run setup.exe.

The Boot Camp installer shouldn't throw up any red flags—accept all of the setup defaults, and sit back and wait while it installs all of Apple's driver software along with Apple Software Update, and reboot when it prompts you to.

How does it work?

The vast majority of programs and drivers that work with Windows 7 also work with Windows 8. Luckily this also applies to much of Apple's Boot Camp software, including read-only access to your Mac's HFS-formatted partition, the Boot Camp control panel that lets you select your default boot partition and adjust other system settings, and the software that makes the Mac's function keys operate as they all do in OS X.

There are some small issues: the graphical overlays for things like volume and brightness don't show up in Windows 8, though the buttons operate normally, and things that bother me about Boot Camp in Windows 7 (like the inability to access FileVault-encrypted volumes) persist in Windows 8, but the new operating system doesn't bring any major, system-breaking new problems.

Driver issues

The biggest issues, especially for gamers, are the drivers. Depending on the Mac you have, you may need to track down and install some additional drivers yourself—2009 and 2010-era Macs with NVIDIA chipsets will probably need to download a separate chipset driver, available here (most Macs use vanilla Intel chipsets, though, so it shouldn't be an issue for anyone else).

The bigger problem is simply outdated drivers, particularly graphics drivers. The Boot Camp 4.0 software came out with Lion in summer of 2011 and hasn't really been updated since then, and as a result you may find yourself using drivers missing almost two years of fixes and performance enhancements.

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Luckily, new drivers are just a few clicks away—Macs use standard PC graphics chips, and these can be powered with standard PC drivers. Below, I've laid out a table of Macs, the graphics chips they use, the driver you'll want to download to go with them, and any other applicable information you'll need to know. All of the drivers below are for use with the 64-bit versions of Windows 8 (but even if you're still sticking with Windows 7, these drivers should help you out, too).

MacsMacBook Air (2011, 2012), 13-inch MacBook Pro (2011, 2012), 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro (2012), Mac Mini (some 2011, 2012)MacBook Air (Late 2008, 2009, 2010), 13-inch MacBook (2009, 2010), 13-inch MacBook Pro and aluminum MacBook (Late 2008, 2009, 2010), 15-inch MacBook Pro (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012) 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (2012), 17-inch MacBook Pro (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010), Mac Mini (2009, 2010), iMac (Early 2009, some late 2009, 2012)15-inch MacBook Pro (2011), 17-inch MacBook Pro (2011), Mac Mini (some 2011), iMac (some 2010, 2011), Mac Pro (2010, 2012)Mac Pro (some early 2008 and 2009 models)
GPUsIntel HD Graphics 3000 and 4000Various NVIDIA GPUsVarious AMD Radeon 5000 and 6000-series GPUsNVIDIA GeForce and Quadro desktop GPUs
DriversIntel graphics driver 15.28.8.64.2875NVIDIA Verde notebook driver 306.97AMD Catalyst 12.10 driverNVIDIA GeForce 306.97 driver; NVIDIA Quadro 307.32 driver
NotesNone. Intel's drivers aren't flashy but they're typically reliable.Your experience with this driver may vary. If you encounter crashes, try rolling back to an older version; my 2010 MacBook Air seems happiest with the 295.73 driver from February, 2012. Also note that, yes, iMacs and Mac Minis do tend to use laptop-class GPUs.If for whatever reason the 12.10 driver won't install (it seemed not to like my 2011 iMac), try the 12.8 version here. Older 2000, 3000, and 4000-series GPUs (most often found in 2007, 2008, and some 2009 and 2010-era iMacs) don't have official Windows 8 driver support; you can try the latest Windows 7 driver from here, or content yourself with the performance of the Boot Camp driver, which will probably be fine for these older GPUs.These cards were only available as an upgrade option for 2008 Mac Pros, or if you've installed an upgraded graphics card in your Mac Pro at some point.

This list should be fairly comprehensive as it stands, but note that we can't possibly test all of the GPUs listed with the suggested drivers, and one person's rock-solid driver could be a buggy, crashing mess for someone else. If you've encountered particular issues with a driver and GPU combo, bring it up in the comments and see if someone can get you the answers you're looking for. With a bit of luck you'll be able to find a relatively current driver that brings your graphics performance up to its best possible level.

Retina support

One final footnote before we finish up here: how does Windows 8 handle the Retina Display currently shipping in some MacBook Pros? When we installed Windows 7 on a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, our experience with 200 percent scaling was hit-or-miss, but Windows 8 is supposed to improve Windows' scaling for use with screens of many different pixel densities.

On the desktop, things haven't changed that much. Disk format readable by mac and windows. Many of the same issues we had in Windows 7 persist: some icons and text looks great, other graphics (including the mouse pointer) look pretty bad. The biggest issue is still with consistency—different applications have vastly different behaviors, and while some applications look just great, others are blurry messes (or, worse, choose to ignore the scaling settings altogether).

The behavior is slightly better for Metro apps. Every one of those I used, from the built-in Mail and Calendar apps to the New York Times and Kindle apps, looked just fine scaled up, though that doesn't mean every app you use will be that way—the Metro version of Chrome, for example, gave me a scaled-up scroll bar but chose to render pages at the same scaling level as before.

Conclusions: Who needs official support?

The variety of Mac configurations out there make this sort of thing an inexact science, but in our experience you shouldn't have problems running Windows 8 on your Macs if you really want to. Official support will smooth over some of the rough edges in the experience, including lack of function key overlays and old, old graphics drivers, but Windows 8's compatibility with software and drivers made for Windows 7 should serve Mac users well here.

How to install Windows on Macs?

The simplest answer is - use 'Bootcamp'

Well if its so simple then.. Why this tutorial?

Because as it stands today, the latest version (5.0.5033) of Bootcampdoes not support mid-2009 macbooks, which in my opinion is a shame esp. when you see a lot of machines in the market with much lower specs are running Win8. And as I soon found out, I was not the only one looking to get this done and found this amazing link on Apple support communities page: How to install Windows 8 on Mid 09 Macbook Pro (10.8.3). A big thanks to 'projectRelentless' and others on this thread, your comments were extremely helpful!
So let me lay down my machine specs
Install Mac On Windows 8 1

Luckily, new drivers are just a few clicks away—Macs use standard PC graphics chips, and these can be powered with standard PC drivers. Below, I've laid out a table of Macs, the graphics chips they use, the driver you'll want to download to go with them, and any other applicable information you'll need to know. All of the drivers below are for use with the 64-bit versions of Windows 8 (but even if you're still sticking with Windows 7, these drivers should help you out, too).

MacsMacBook Air (2011, 2012), 13-inch MacBook Pro (2011, 2012), 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro (2012), Mac Mini (some 2011, 2012)MacBook Air (Late 2008, 2009, 2010), 13-inch MacBook (2009, 2010), 13-inch MacBook Pro and aluminum MacBook (Late 2008, 2009, 2010), 15-inch MacBook Pro (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012) 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (2012), 17-inch MacBook Pro (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010), Mac Mini (2009, 2010), iMac (Early 2009, some late 2009, 2012)15-inch MacBook Pro (2011), 17-inch MacBook Pro (2011), Mac Mini (some 2011), iMac (some 2010, 2011), Mac Pro (2010, 2012)Mac Pro (some early 2008 and 2009 models)
GPUsIntel HD Graphics 3000 and 4000Various NVIDIA GPUsVarious AMD Radeon 5000 and 6000-series GPUsNVIDIA GeForce and Quadro desktop GPUs
DriversIntel graphics driver 15.28.8.64.2875NVIDIA Verde notebook driver 306.97AMD Catalyst 12.10 driverNVIDIA GeForce 306.97 driver; NVIDIA Quadro 307.32 driver
NotesNone. Intel's drivers aren't flashy but they're typically reliable.Your experience with this driver may vary. If you encounter crashes, try rolling back to an older version; my 2010 MacBook Air seems happiest with the 295.73 driver from February, 2012. Also note that, yes, iMacs and Mac Minis do tend to use laptop-class GPUs.If for whatever reason the 12.10 driver won't install (it seemed not to like my 2011 iMac), try the 12.8 version here. Older 2000, 3000, and 4000-series GPUs (most often found in 2007, 2008, and some 2009 and 2010-era iMacs) don't have official Windows 8 driver support; you can try the latest Windows 7 driver from here, or content yourself with the performance of the Boot Camp driver, which will probably be fine for these older GPUs.These cards were only available as an upgrade option for 2008 Mac Pros, or if you've installed an upgraded graphics card in your Mac Pro at some point.

This list should be fairly comprehensive as it stands, but note that we can't possibly test all of the GPUs listed with the suggested drivers, and one person's rock-solid driver could be a buggy, crashing mess for someone else. If you've encountered particular issues with a driver and GPU combo, bring it up in the comments and see if someone can get you the answers you're looking for. With a bit of luck you'll be able to find a relatively current driver that brings your graphics performance up to its best possible level.

Retina support

One final footnote before we finish up here: how does Windows 8 handle the Retina Display currently shipping in some MacBook Pros? When we installed Windows 7 on a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, our experience with 200 percent scaling was hit-or-miss, but Windows 8 is supposed to improve Windows' scaling for use with screens of many different pixel densities.

On the desktop, things haven't changed that much. Disk format readable by mac and windows. Many of the same issues we had in Windows 7 persist: some icons and text looks great, other graphics (including the mouse pointer) look pretty bad. The biggest issue is still with consistency—different applications have vastly different behaviors, and while some applications look just great, others are blurry messes (or, worse, choose to ignore the scaling settings altogether).

The behavior is slightly better for Metro apps. Every one of those I used, from the built-in Mail and Calendar apps to the New York Times and Kindle apps, looked just fine scaled up, though that doesn't mean every app you use will be that way—the Metro version of Chrome, for example, gave me a scaled-up scroll bar but chose to render pages at the same scaling level as before.

Conclusions: Who needs official support?

The variety of Mac configurations out there make this sort of thing an inexact science, but in our experience you shouldn't have problems running Windows 8 on your Macs if you really want to. Official support will smooth over some of the rough edges in the experience, including lack of function key overlays and old, old graphics drivers, but Windows 8's compatibility with software and drivers made for Windows 7 should serve Mac users well here.

How to install Windows on Macs?

The simplest answer is - use 'Bootcamp'

Well if its so simple then.. Why this tutorial?

Because as it stands today, the latest version (5.0.5033) of Bootcampdoes not support mid-2009 macbooks, which in my opinion is a shame esp. when you see a lot of machines in the market with much lower specs are running Win8. And as I soon found out, I was not the only one looking to get this done and found this amazing link on Apple support communities page: How to install Windows 8 on Mid 09 Macbook Pro (10.8.3). A big thanks to 'projectRelentless' and others on this thread, your comments were extremely helpful!
So let me lay down my machine specs and will then go through the to-do's and not to-do's for installation process.
I'm running Mountain Lion 10.8.5 on a mid-2009 13' macbook pro. core2duo, 2.26GHz, 160GB HDD, 4GB RAM with NVIDIA 9400M

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And I installed Windows8.1 64bit edition - partitioned OSX using USB installer, but installation needs a DVD - USB install will not work if you are planning to install using bootcamp support. You DO NOT need Windows7. The process should apply for Windows 8, if you have a compelling reason to install that, though I'd say 8.1 is better, esp. the windows/start icon is back :D

Install Mac On Windows 10


Note: having a USB mouse during installation could be handy. Else you'll have to click / select either using your keyboard or by pressing your trackpad at bottom left because tap-to-click won't work.

And here are the steps!

Once again, they are largely derived from the discussion I linked above and I'm going to refer mainly the changes

Can You Install Mac On Windows

  1. Firstly, unlike the main instruction.. you do not require a Windows7 DVD. So relax if you don't have one! But then, how do you partition the disk? (I think you can use Win8 DVD, but since I was initially trying to use USB install mode, I did not check it)
    The trick is to fool bootcamp to believe that the current device can burn a USB. How?
    • Go to Applications->Utilities, Right click on Bootcamp and select 'Show Package Content'
    • Open Info.plist using Xcode, TextEdit or from terminal using vi, etc. You may be required to add yourself to users with edit permission.
    • Find the line which says - USBBootSupportedModels and add your model to the list of supported models by adding the line: MacbookPro5,5
      • Alternately, in some machines you may find the following key Win7OnlyModels . In this case, delete the line MacbookPro5,5 which you'll find somewhere below this.
      • Note: replace the value with your model number.
    • The next time you launch Bootcamp Assitant, you'll see an option to burn USB disk. Do this and then partition your disk. Give Windows (takes about 15-20GB) at least 40GB esp. if you are planning to install Visual Studio (10GB+) after that.
  2. Once you are done partitioning, your system will restart and boot using the USB (if you have left it plugged in). And here is the catch
    • With USB installer, you'll be able to start the installation process. Provide the key, etc. etc. but will get stuck on the screen for choosing partition.
    • You'll read in the linked discussion about 'cannot install to the partition' error and the workaround of formatting the partition to use NTFS, etc. But..
      • With USB install this won't budge. You'll not be able to move any bit forward from here. Why? Apparently, the USB installer only supports Windows 8.1 or for that matter Win8 in EFI mode something that will not go hand-in-hand with this bootcamp created partition.
      • So whats the alternative? the other option is to install in CSM mode. Google to read more about UEFI vs CSM / Legacy / BIOS boot
      • What does not having EFI cost to us? Nothing much except for a little longish booting time.
  3. And this is where you'll need your DVD (Win8 or Win8.1).
    • After bootcamp assistant is done partitioning, simply remove the USB and insert your DVD.
    • Go through the installation steps.
    • You'll again find the partition screen, which will show the same error (unless you have formatted the partition when you reached this screen with your USB installation).
    • This time formatting the partition will let you pass through.
    • Let Windows do its bits, restart a couple of time and so on.
    • Create your account and choose your settings when asked.
  4. Finally, you'll find yourself staring at the shiny new tiles of Win8.1. but with a few glitches. You'll still be missing the tap-to-click feature for trackpad as well as the function keys like volume, display brightness, etc.
  5. Download the bootcamp drivers. NOTE: you do not need to install the 4.xx drivers mentioned in the discussion I referred above.
    • Go to folder: Bootcamp->Drivers->Apple and run the Bootcamp.msi. It will throw an error and won't run. This is where you'll need the registry file from http://www.theprojectdev.com/public/pub.html specified the original post. Create your own or download from the link (I simply downloaded it) and install it.
    • Now right click on the 'BootCamp.msi' and run it as Administrator and it will go through.
    • This will install the bootcamp drivers and support for your trackpad and function keys and a few other features.
    • Finally your system will ask for a restart, do it!
  6. And you are done.. Now pat your back to have successfully installed it and share your happiness plus these instructions with your friends.

Install Windows On Mac

Enjoy!CodeProject



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