MacBook – Want to Install Windows 10 onto MacBookPro (15″, Early 2011) running Sierra 10.12.6

bootcampmacbook prowindows

My early 2011 15 inch MacBook Pro has 2.3 Intel Core i7, 8 GB memory, 750 GB SATA Disk and a SuperDrive. I completely erased the hard drive with Disk Utility and reinstalled os 10.12.6. My goal is to use this computer to run Windows with BootCamp, because my late 2009 iMac has become very burdened running Windows 7 in Parallels. I need Windows to use my accounting program. I will continue to use my iMac for everything else.

So my first problem was that my Windows 7 key will not work. I purchased a Windows10 Home full version USB flash drive.Using Boot Camp I downloaded the Windows Drivers to the USB. The point was reached where a password was asked for, indicating that the installation of Windows was successful. But after I gave the password, the message was "The installer disk could not be found. Insert Windows installer disk and wait for it to be recognized."

Next I received some advice to burn the iso files to a DVD. I purchased a HD DVD-R with 15 GB. However, neither my iMac nor the MacBook Pro will perform the task. So I am seeing a lot of posts from people experiencing problems with the SuperDrive under Sierra.I would rather not go down this rabbit hole, so I am hoping there might be an answer that will work using the flash drive that I already have.

Some of the answers that I read to similar questions seem really complicated; I hope that there might be a relatively easy fix

Best Answer

In 2011, Windows was still being installed to BIOS boot on Macs. The drivers provided by Apple assume you will be installing for a BIOS booting Windows. You can not directly install a BIOS booting Windows on any model Mac using a flash drive. The easiest solution would be to burn a Windows 10 iso file to a DVD-R DL.

Creating a burnable iso image from Windows 10 USB flash drive installer.

According to the instructions provided by Apple, you are suppose to download the ISO from Microsoft. Read Step 2 in the document I have linked to.

However, you may be able to burn the ISO file from the USB flash drive Windows 10 installer you purchased to the DVD by using the command given below.

Using a machine running Windows 10, I created a Windows 10 USB flash drive installer. After inserting the flash drive in a 2011 iMac running High Sierra, I was able to enter the following command to create a bootable Windows 10 ISO file. You will need to burn the image stored in the windows10.iso file to a DVD. The image was only 4.15 GB in size so I was able to use a DVD-RW.

hdiutil makehybrid -o windows10.iso /Volumes/ESD-USB -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 8 -eltorito-boot /Volumes/ESD-USB/boot/etfsboot.com

The name of the flash drive shown in the finder was ESD-USB. The -boot-load-size was set to 8 sectors, because the size of the etfsboot.com file was 4096 bytes and the sector size is 512 bytes. ( 8 * 512 = 4096 )

To boot from the DVD, do the following.

  1. Insert the DVD
  2. Restart
  3. Immediately hold down the option key until the Startup Manager icons appears.
  4. Select the DVD icon labeled Windows.
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