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Mark-Technology

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 25, 2011
140
306
First of all I'm running Windows 10 on a MacBook Pro 15" Late 2011 through the recommended install method of BootCamp Assistant with a Windows 10 ISO burned to a DVD (tricked BCA with a Windows 8.1 ISO mounted through Daemon tools. After BCA partitions and automatically restarts Mac it doesn't know if your CD has XP, 10, 98 or 8 etc.

After a clean install of Windows 10 and not manually installing any drivers or BootCamp Support setup, a few restarts later, the only drivers/devices in device manager that complain are all Apple ones (like Facetime camera and bluetooth). Most were perfectly up to date and the chipset drivers were 3 years more recent than Apple's provided ones.

Windows 10 is doing a better job every year at automatically getting correct drivers for most hardware (chipset, ethernet, Wi-Fi etc.)

A few exceptions would be Cirrus audio, as Apple's provided ones are required for them (not found elsewhere) and the Bluetooth drivers. In all other cases, Apple drivers are horribly outdated and the Windows 10 self-found drivers work equally or better.

BootCamp Support software also unnecessarily installs some drivers for devices that are not even present on the Mac build it is running on.

It installs Realtek for no reason when there is only Cirrus audio on my mac, no sign of Realtek and the driver does not get used after installation, just exists for nothing. Also installs Marvell drivers when their ethernet controllers don't exist in any Mac after 2008. Heck it even tries to install Nvidia on AMD macs but fails (why even try in the first place. Apple could have written a simple file with configurations prior to bootcamp's setup.exe).

The worst part/experience for me was that the chipset drives installed by bootcamp's setup can be right clicked in device manager and updated as well like I mentioned earlier. So Windows knows the chipset is regular Intel and not Apple modified/specific and thus has modern drivers that existed during Windows 8.1 (since Windows 10 is not offically supported by Apple on this Mac, but works just perfectly like 8.1) but Apple intentionally did not use them. They literally did not use Windows 8.1 approved Intel chipset drives when they updated their support software in 2014.

On High Sierra with APFS, BootCamp Control Panel can no longer see the Macintosh HD drive and therefore it cannot do anything for me and does not change the startup disk (need to press option at startup) other than adjust trackpad settings or Apple remote settings. Neither of which I use with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse.





Pro Tip: Get customized modern AMD graphics drivers for BootCamp on bootcampdrivers.com. They work perfectly and are signed to support all modern AMD features which AMD and Apple themselves don't provide.


Tl;DR:

Sorry for the rant but what I'm saying is that you can run Windows 10 or any Windows on a legacy Mac (2011 MBP in my case) without having to run the bootcamp support software setup.exe. Just go into the support software's "Apple" folder under "Drivers" folder and install what's needed for your apple only devices such as facetime, trackpad etc. But let windows handle the other crucial drivers on its own -- such as chipset, ethernet, get your own graphics drivers, etc. Don't let bootcamp automatically install outdated drivers just because Apple says so.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Mark-Technology

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 25, 2011
140
306
Okay, Why did I have to highlight this in order to read it?


For some reason it was explicitly set to white text (possibly due to using a third-party dark mode addon or something?). I've fixed it.


This is very late from me, but I changed the text to white to avoid people from reading this rant (I found it stupid) and I didn't know how to delete posts on Macrumors. Don't know if it's even possible.

I'm surprised someone found it hahahah.
 

Tech198

Cancelled
Mar 21, 2011
15,915
2,151
First of all I'm running Windows 10 on a MacBook Pro 15" Late 2011 through the recommended install method of BootCamp Assistant with a Windows 10 ISO burned to a DVD (tricked BCA with a Windows 8.1 ISO mounted through Daemon tools. After BCA partitions and automatically restarts Mac it doesn't know if your CD has XP, 10, 98 or 8 etc.

After a clean install of Windows 10 and not manually installing any drivers or BootCamp Support setup, a few restarts later, the only drivers/devices in device manager that complain are all Apple ones (like Facetime camera and bluetooth). Most were perfectly up to date and the chipset drivers were 3 years more recent than Apple's provided ones.

Windows 10 is doing a better job every year at automatically getting correct drivers for most hardware (chipset, ethernet, Wi-Fi etc.)

A few exceptions would be Cirrus audio, as Apple's provided ones are required for them (not found elsewhere) and the Bluetooth drivers. In all other cases, Apple drivers are horribly outdated and the Windows 10 self-found drivers work equally or better.

BootCamp Support software also unnecessarily installs some drivers for devices that are not even present on the Mac build it is running on.

It installs Realtek for no reason when there is only Cirrus audio on my mac, no sign of Realtek and the driver does not get used after installation, just exists for nothing. Also installs Marvell drivers when their ethernet controllers don't exist in any Mac after 2008. Heck it even tries to install Nvidia on AMD macs but fails (why even try in the first place. Apple could have written a simple file with configurations prior to bootcamp's setup.exe).

The worst part/experience for me was that the chipset drives installed by bootcamp's setup can be right clicked in device manager and updated as well like I mentioned earlier. So Windows knows the chipset is regular Intel and not Apple modified/specific and thus has modern drivers that existed during Windows 8.1 (since Windows 10 is not offically supported by Apple on this Mac, but works just perfectly like 8.1) but Apple intentionally did not use them. They literally did not use Windows 8.1 approved Intel chipset drives when they updated their support software in 2014.

On High Sierra with APFS, BootCamp Control Panel can no longer see the Macintosh HD drive and therefore it cannot do anything for me and does not change the startup disk (need to press option at startup) other than adjust trackpad settings or Apple remote settings. Neither of which I use with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse.





Pro Tip: Get customized modern AMD graphics drivers for BootCamp on bootcampdrivers.com. They work perfectly and are signed to support all modern AMD features which AMD and Apple themselves don't provide.


Tl;DR:

Sorry for the rant but what I'm saying is that you can run Windows 10 or any Windows on a legacy Mac (2011 MBP in my case) without having to run the bootcamp support software setup.exe. Just go into the support software's "Apple" folder under "Drivers" folder and install what's needed for your apple only devices such as facetime, trackpad etc. But let windows handle the other crucial drivers on its own -- such as chipset, ethernet, get your own graphics drivers, etc. Don't let bootcamp automatically install outdated drivers just because Apple says so.


I hate to sound like a negative here, but perhaps Apple knows some drivers are better than others??

Also, Windows could never read APFS and could never switch to a Mac from BC control panel directly, let alone see the Mac partition/drive.. It's always been that way. Mac OS X can 'see' Windows drives (NTFS/Fat32/exfat etc), but not visa vea. Thus, the only way to switch back to OS X is using boot manager at bootime (Option)
 

Mark-Technology

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 25, 2011
140
306
I hate to sound like a negative here, but perhaps Apple knows some drivers are better than others??

Also, Windows could never read APFS and could never switch to a Mac from BC control panel directly, let alone see the Mac partition/drive.. It's always been that way. Mac OS X can 'see' Windows drives (NTFS/Fat32/exfat etc), but not visa vea. Thus, the only way to switch back to OS X is using boot manager at bootime (Option)


Not sure what your second paragraph is referencing. That's not a problem for me. Even if you dont install any boot camp control panel, or disable it in Services...your mac's EFI can start up to Windows and macOS can see bootcamp is a valid windows partition.
Software is not firmware.

Apple knew, but doesn't anymore...this is why an entire community exists to make better drivers than they did 7 years ago lmao.

This post is years old and at the time not being able to see APFS drives was a big deal so I mentioned that, but I only mentioned it to signify how useless the BC control panel is and not needed.

Unless you need to adjust trackpad, remote settings then you can leave it disabled (install and disable at services after configuring once).

The bootcampdrivers.com AMD drivers alone will make your mac perform AT LEAST 50% better graphically.

Edit you need to acknowledge the fact Apple only "supports" Windows 8.1 on my mac and stopped driver updates in 2013 lol.
They pull intel drivers without altering anything in them, this is why device manager in windows can update them with one right click.
 
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