Cannot install Windows on iMac mid-2011 on MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6

thekingofmonks · February 5, 2023

I'm trying to get Windows 10 installed on a mid-2011 iMac with MacOS High Sierra (10.13.6)

I have tried the following:

Installing Windows 7 from a CD using Bootcamp before installing Windows 10. I used an external drive as the internal ODD wouldn't read discs properly. I couldn't even get past installing Win7 as its installer wouldn't load correctly and the mac boots to a black prompt screen. Some say that it's precisely the use of an external ODD that is causing this issue.
Same as above except it was directly from boot select.
Directly installing Win10 from a flash drive, while having disabled SIP and created a strictly GPT partition with GPT fdisk (given Apple's sh1tty implementation of their Hybrid MBR). This ultimately led to Windows 10 being installed fully but booting into a looping state [where the screen is black and the mouse is active but its position resets to the center every couple of seconds.]
Same as the third method except that I followed a Github post (only partially given the commenters' suggestions https://gist.github.com/oznu/8796d08d73315483c3b26e79a8e3d350) to modify Bootcamp in order to make it fully support Windows 10 installation. The same issue ensued.

I've had to repartition and delete Windows entries manually multiple times because Apple's disk util is garbage.

I haven't yet tried using MacOS El Capitan (10.11) as said in the above Github post because backing things up, clean installing MacOS and then having to reinstall every 3rd party app is quite a pain in the 4ss.

What do you suggest I do? Are there other ways to do this?

I see other people do it flawlessly on the same model and same OS, so wtf did they do for it to work?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Edited February 5, 2023 by thekingofmonks

johnno23 · February 5, 2023

Macs from that era could still boot from external drives without an issue. Simply make selection on boot.

So if you have an external drive you can mess with just dump a copy of macos on it boot from there and try doing the windows install on that drive.

If that works then something in your system needs fixing.

We know you have an issue already but where that lies could be in permissions possible 3rd party conflicts and as you are probably aware the list could be so long it makes a rabbit hole look inviting.

Just make sure that it is possible on an external is what I would do rather than continually hitting a wall with constant failures. From there you have a base to work from.

thekingofmonks · February 5, 2023

4 minutes ago, johnno23 said:

Macs from that era could still boot from external drives without an issue. Simply make selection on boot.

I forgot to mention that I did try this as well

4 minutes ago, johnno23 said:

So if you have an external drive you can mess with just dump a copy of macos on it boot from there and try doing the windows install on that drive.

Thanks, will do.