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Installing Windows 8 on Bootcamp - yes or no?

I

imacken

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 28, 2010
1,275
141
Can someone give me a definitive answer on this as I've read so many conflicting posts?
Is it OK to update a Windows 7 Bootcamp to Windows 8 on a 2011 iMac? Some people say it's no problem, others say the Superdrive doesn't, work, or the trackpad, etc.
Some say wait for Bootcamp drivers to be updated, others say everything is fine.
I'm confused!
 
imacken said:
Can someone give me a definitive answer on this as I've read so many conflicting posts?
Is it OK to update a Windows 7 Bootcamp to Windows 8 on a 2011 iMac? Some people say it's no problem, others say the Superdrive doesn't, work, or the trackpad, etc.
Some say wait for Bootcamp drivers to be updated, others say everything is fine.
I'm confused!
Click to expand...

Well, I installed it on my 2010 Macbook Pro via Bootcamp and it seems to be mostly usable.

I haven't tried using the superdrive yet.. so I dont know about that.
My SD card slot doesn't work.
The function keys and everything seem to work fine.
Trackpad and Magic Mouse work great most of the time - these are both ideal for Windows 8 because of the ability to swipe etc; however every once in a while after coming back from standby the swiping and secondary (right) click on the trackpad stops working. Upon a restart of the computer these functions start working again.
There is also the rare time that the screen brightness gets messed and flickers until I press the "increase brightness" (F2) key.

I am hoping Apple releases bootcamp updates soon that fixes these bugs and improves support for Windows 8 under bootcamp!
 
It works great on my 2009 mac mini. Everything works. I guess you're going to have to test it for yourself.
 
works fine on my mbp 2009. installing went fine, all hardware was recognized except nvidia (too old bootcamp driver). downoaded the latest driver for w8 on nvidias page, fine since then.

only issue i have is the missing shadow-pictures when u hit function keys. no solution for it till now. the function keys work fine, but without showing the nice shadow-pictures. on w7 they were shown correctly.

i wont go back to w7, so i can give a recommondation for w8.
 
duffman9000 said:
If you need your system to be stable you should wait. On my early 2011 15" MBP, Windows will crash shortly after I insert a USB stick.
Click to expand...

That's weird. W8 handled everything so far. It's been surprisingly stable. I guess I'll keep my fingers crossed.
 
Had some problems with my new rmbp 13.

First boot was completely messed up, it couldn't display properly on the notebook screen. Plugged in an HDMI monitor and got the apple drivers installed. That fixed that problem.

After I did that, the trick was to try and get windows update to run before the thing crashed. There is an update that needs to be applied to stop macbooks from randomly freezing.

Finally, installed TrackPad++.

It all works well now. I do find that Apple and MS ecosystems do not play well together. That is, my media is quite trapped in one or the other, and that is lame. Means I'll be picking one, and OS X will win.
 
hmm, too bad. I want them back :(
maybe I could try to uninstall and reinstall bootcamp.
 
OK, the install on my iMac was perfect.
I booted into W7 Bootcamp, then did a clean install from the DVD of W8. Following that, I installed the current Bootcamp drivers, and everything works perfectly, including W8 in Parallels 8.
 
Running Windows 8 Pro x64 Retail on a 15" rMBP nearly flawlessly. I installed from a flash drive created with the boot camp utility; I encountered no problems during setup, and the OSD for the brightness and sound adjustments does show properly. The only hangup is the fact that the boot camp control panel has permissions issues and won't load under an administrative account, so you have to make a secondary admin account, change the original account to standard, log in to that, adjust the boot camp control panel settings (for some reason it has no problem working with more restrictive privileges), and then give the account administrative privileges again (because boot camp control panel settings are specific to each account). Or you could install trackpad++ or something.

Of course, that's all notwithstanding the infuriatingly crippling lack of integrated GPU support under boot camp. I really hope somebody can figure out how to get a fully-functional native EFI installation working soon. :(

scarred said:
Had some problems with my new rmbp 13.

First boot was completely messed up, it couldn't display properly on the notebook screen. Plugged in an HDMI monitor and got the apple drivers installed. That fixed that problem.

After I did that, the trick was to try and get windows update to run before the thing crashed. There is an update that needs to be applied to stop macbooks from randomly freezing.

Finally, installed TrackPad++.

It all works well now. I do find that Apple and MS ecosystems do not play well together. That is, my media is quite trapped in one or the other, and that is lame. Means I'll be picking one, and OS X will win.
Click to expand...

You could always install a tool to allow one OS to write to the filesystem of the other, and as you probably know, with a boot camp installation both OSes can read each other's file systems without any problems. Also, protip for running Windows at native retina resolutions--under screen resolution and "make text and other items larger or smaller", if you use a custom setting of 199%, everything looks pretty nice without some of the interface elements bugging out like crazy if you go to 200% or higher.
 
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