Do's and Don'ts of installing multiple OSes on MacBook Pro Late 2011

I have successfully installed macOS High Sierra, Windows 10, and Ubuntu 20.04 on MacBook Pro Late 2011, and there were some challenges worth noting down.

Formatting the disk

When booting into recovery mode to format the disk, the installation USB used must be of an OS X (Mavericks, for my case), not a macOS (newer version). I once booted into recovery mode using macOS High Sierra installation USB to format the disk with GUID Partition Map scheme, and then I was unabled to install Windows 10 through VirtualBox. I got the error message "The selected disk is of the GPT partition style." when selecting a partition to install Windows on. 

This is because I tried to install Windows using legacy mode and then Windows required a MBR disk, but it was GPT disk. However, when I booted into recovery mode using OS X Mavericks installation USB instead to format the disk with GPT Partition Table cheme, the error message was gone. Why? because the disk was hybrid MBR, not pure GPT, and so Mac OS saw it as GPT but Windows saw it as MBR. As Windows did not support EFI mode at that time, Apple used hybrid MBR to allow users to install Windows on its machines that used EFI boot.

Partitioning the disk

The disk must be partitioned as needed before installing any OSes on it or one of the OSes won't boot after the partition is resized or a new partition is created. 

At first, I didn't do that. After installing macOS High Sierra and Windows 10, I created another partition from the Windows 10 partition and then Windows stopped booting. It's because of the OS's boot entry is missing from the MBR, and I don't know why but this post claimed to fix that using a third-party tool. Unfortunately, I've never succeeded.

Ordering the partitions

In my case, I have 5 primary partitions:

1. EFI system partition
2. macOS
3. Windows
4. DATA
5. Linux

The first partition was hidden and created automatically by DiskUtility so I shouldn't have mentioned it but this is to show that the DATA partition must be the fourth partition so that it would appear in File Explorer (as I wanted) when booting into Windows. If it was the last one, it wouldn't show up. This is because the disk was MBR to Windows and so it could have only four primary partitions. Windows recognized only the first four partitions and ignored the rest so Linux partition was treated as unallocated space (this can be checked in Disk Management).

In DiskUtility (of OS X Mavericks), the first partition is graphically on top. Since the EFI system partition is not visible in DiskUtility, the macOS partition is on top instead.

Installing Windows using BIOS legacy mode without CD-ROM

Since my CD-ROM drive stopped working a long time ago, I couldn't install Windows with Boot Camp Assistant because my machine, by default, only looked for Windows installation files from the CD-ROM drive but it couldn't find it. 

When I forced the machine to look for the Windows installation files from a USB drive (by holding down the Option key while it's starting), it worked but Windows was installed using EFI mode instead, and the problem with EFI mode is the external monitor is not detected on Windows. This problem only happens on my Mac model, not the newer ones.

Everything worked fine when installing Windows using BIOS legacy mode, and the workaround was installing it through VirtualBox. I noted it down here.

Errors restoring or creating a disk image from a volume using DiskUtility

I'm using Macbook Air running macOS Big Sur, and I was having troubles performing disk restore using DiskUtility.

ERROR 1: I was unable to restore a volume to a new blank disk image I created. 

There could be a couple reasons such as the size of the blank disk image is smaller than the size of the source volume or there was no partition in the disk image (must be manually created at least 1 partition). But, even if I did follow all these requirements, the restore still failed.

ERROR 2: When trying to create a new disk image from a device or folder, I got the error message like "...operation not permitted". 

The function to create a new image from a device/folder is useful because the size of the new disk image will automatically be set to the size of the source device/folder, and the contents of the device/folder are restored (cloned) to the new disk image. 

SOLUTION

The errors occured because DiskUtility did not have enough privileges to perform those operations. After assigning a Full Disk Access permission to DiskUtility, I could restore a volume to a disk image (and vice versa) without any problems.

How to assign Full Disk Access permission to DiskUtility?

Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy then select Full Disk Access from the listbox on the left and click on the Plus sign to add DiskUtility to the right listbox and make sure it's checked.

Backing up macOS with Time Machine

I installed macOS Big Sur on my MacBook Air (11-inch 2013) and used Time Machine application to backup the macOS partition to an external USB drive. 

I also created a bootable macOS Big Sur installation USB stick for restoring the changes back in time using Time Machine, or just installing a fresh macOS Big Sur. In fact, I can also boot into Recovery Mode to perform restore or install too (pressing Command + R while the machine is starting). If the hidden Recovery partition that macOS created is also corrupted or erased, the built-in internet Recovery Mode is used instead. The internet Recovery needs WiFi access to download recovery system image from Apple then start the Recovery mode.

Time Machine backs up the neccesary files to an external hard drive and then uses the backup drive to restore the files back in time. Time Machine can be thought of System Restore in Windows (it's not cloning). I formatted the backup drive using Mac OS Extended (journaled) file system but macOS Big Sur's Time Machine reformatted it as APFS (Case-sensitive). 

Backing up with Time Machine

1. Open System Preferences > Time Machine

2. Click on Select Disk... button and choose a drive or a partition to store the backup files. In my case, the partition's name is Time Machine's Backups (MBA-BigSur) as shown in the image below.

3. Click Options... button and make sure to add any drives or paritions other than the one running OS in the exlusion list

4. Uncheck Backup Automatically so it only backs up when neended.

5. Check Show Time Machine in menu bar then the clock icon will appear at the top of the screen

6. Click on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and select Back Up Now

ERROR: " This copy of the Install OS X Mavericks application can't be verified. it may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading"

The error messsage was thrown when running OS X Mavericks Installer (previously downloaded from App Store).

For my case, this is because the installer file was downloaded years ago so the certificate come with it had expired. I should re-download it but it was no longer available on App Store.

Thus, the workaround is to change my machine's date (clock) to the release year of OS X Mavericks. It's easy to change the date if the installer is launched from the running OS X prior to Mavericks, but if it is launched from Recovery mode, it invovles running commands in Terminal (there's enough posts on the net about this though).

Creating OS X Mavericks (or macOS) Bootable USB Drive

When downloading OS X Mavericks from App Store, the installer file's name might be something like  "Install OS X Mavericks.app" and stored in /Application folder.  Double click on the file would launch the installer then lead to restarting machine and installing the OS X Mavericks. 

But, OS X Mavericks was not available on App Store anymore so I downloaded it from someone else's backup on the net. He renamed the file "Install OS X Mavericks.app" to "Mavericks.app" and wrapped it in a DMG file.

I'm using MacBook Air running macOS Big Sur to make this bootable USB drive, just in case my machine fails to boot for some reasons.

Method 1

1. Prepare a USB stick with at least 6 GB then open DiskUtility to format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and name it as InstallOSXMavericks.

2. Double click on the DMG file in Finder to mount it and copy the Mavericks.app to the /Applications folder.

3. Open Terminal and run the following command:

sudo /Applications/Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/InstallOSXMavericks --applicationpath /Applications/Mavericks.app --nointeraction

NOTE: For macOS Sierra, the command might fail with the error message below:

/Volumes/NAK-InstallMacOSSierra is not a valid volume mount point.

If it does, run the following command:

sudo plutil -replace CFBundleShortVersionString -string "12.6.03" /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Info.plist

4. Restart the machine. Before it starts, press and hold Option key until the boot menu shows up. Choose Install OS X Mavericks and wait to see if it's really bootable.

Method 2

1. Make sure DiskUtility has Full Disk Access permission. If not, assign it the permission, and here is how.

2. Prepare a USB stick with at least 6 GB then open DiskUtility to format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and name it as InstallOSXMavericks.

3. Open Finder then double click on the installer file (DMG) to mount it

4. Navigate to the mounted image file then right click on Mavericks.app and select Show Package Contents. After that, open this folder Contents > SharedSupport and double click on InstallESD.dmg file to mount and show it in DiskUtility.

5. Select the USB drive from the side bar then click Restore and choose InstallESD.dmg from "Restore from" combobox and click Restore again.

6. When the restore completes, restart the machine. Before it starts, press and hold Option key until the boot menu shows up. It would not show Install OS X Mavericks like in Method 1 but EFI instead. Choose EFI then wait to see if it's really bootable. There can be another bootable device showing as EFI too. This is confusing and need to guess and try.  

NOTE: I used Method 1 to create a bootable USB for macOS Big Sur too and it worked.

REFERENCE

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

Creating a bootable Windows 10 installation USB drive

The easieset way to create a bootable installation media (USB drive) for Windows 10 (or any other Operating Systems) is using UNetbootin (a free open-source software). It can run on Mac OSes, Windows, and Linux.

I downloaded and installed UNetbootin on my MacBook Air (running macOS Big Sur) and used it to create a bootable Windows 10 installation USB drive successfully. It had two options for writing the Windows 10 setup file to the USB stick: automatically downloading Windows 10 and using local ISO file of Windows 10. I tried it with my MacBook Pro, and it did boot up from that USB. 

Step 1:

Open Terminal and run the following command to see the device identifier of the USB partition for storing Windows 10 installation file (which can be downloaded for free from Microsoft's website).

> diskutil list

For my case, I named the USB parition as REPAIRWIN10 and then the assigned identifier was disk2s6.

Step 2:

Start UNetbootin application and configure it as followings:

Unable to create a System Restore point on Windows 10 running on Macbook Pro 2011

After successfully installing Windows 10 on Macbook Pro 2011, I tried to create a System Restore point but got the failure message below.

The restore point could not be created. The shadow copy provider had an error (code 0x80042306).

Many people on the net recommended starting the Shadow Copy Provider in Services (press Windows + R then type services.msc) if it isn't running or restarting it if it is already running, but that didn't fix it.

Then, I checked the logs in Event Viewer and see the description of the error code 0x80042306 below. NOTE: To start Event Viewer, open Control Panel > System and Security then click on View event logs under Administrative Tools. After that, select Event Viewer (Local) > Windows Logs > Application (or System) and create a System Restore point so that the error shows up in the logs again.

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error CreateFileW(\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy38...

I googled it and some people said the AppleHFS driver (from Boot Camp) is the cause of the error, and they suggested disabling it. The driver allows read-only access to an HFS drive (HFS is a Mac OS file system format). Since I didn't need to access any HFS drives, I was fine with it. After disabling it, I was able to create System Restore.

Disabling AppleHFS driver:

1. Download and install Autoruns program (a part of Sysinternals Utilities to see the description of the error code).

2. Open File Explorer then navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers and rename the file AppleHFS.sys to AppleHFS_DISABLED.sys (or anything else).

3. Restart the machine.

Useful programs and browser's extensions for my Macbook Pro 2011 running Windows 10

Programs

QTTabBar

It adds tabs to File Explorer.

Notepad++

It's a free source code editor supported several languages.

VLC

It's easy to add subtitle for a movie and can also increase the brightness and contrast of a video if it's too dark.

Free Download Manager

- Free
- Download any files faster 
- Integrate with browsers (using extension)
- Download torrents
- Download Youtube videos (in many formats or sizes)
iGetter is a good alternative; it's free, supports browser integration, and can download a whole site.

Chrome Extensions

Video DownloadHelper (Offered by: www.downloadhelper.net)

It can download movies (MP4 files) from any sites like kissasian.al.

Free Download Manager (Offered by: Free Download Manager.ORG)

It helps transfer any downloads, even from Video DownloadHelper extension, to Free Download Manager desktop program.

#1 FB Video Downloader HD+ (SnapSave) (Offered by: SnapSave Company)

It can download videos from Facebook, just clicking on the panel at the top right corner of a video without even playing. It also provides an option to download different video sizes.

Useful apps and browser's extensions for my Macbook Air running macOS Big Sur

Applications

BBEdit

Its free mode has enough features such as rich text formats (eg. line numbers) and multiple opening documents.

Free Download Manager (FDM)

It's free, can download torrents and Youtube videos (in many formats and sizes), and integrate with browsers to capture downloads. iGetter is a good alternative but is supported only by earlier Mac OSes at the moment. iGetter can download a whole website but not torrents and Youtube videos.

VLC

I'm using it to play movie files (MP4). It's easy to add and adjust the color and size of subtitles. I can also adjust the brightness and contrast of a video so that it's not too dark to see.

Installing Windows 10 on Macbook Pro 2011 (unsupported Mac) and Fixing Sounds

My Macbook Pro 13-inch Early 2011 is in the list of Bootcamp Support for Windows 7 and Windows 8, but not Windows 10. It means that my machine would be fine running Windows 7 and Windows 8, yet some hardware might not be recognized when running Windows 10. However, later Mac models work just fine with Windows 10 because Apple provides hardware drivers (Bootcamp Support) for them.

[Method 1] HERE is how I successfully installed Windows 7 via VirtualBox. And here is some solved issues happened during installation. It worked with Windows 10 too, just using a Windows 10 ISO file instead, but sound didn't work out of the box. There were several steps to do for solving the sound issue. However, built-in keyboard and USB mouse worked fine without insalling drivers from Bootcamp Support (but I wasn't able to adjust screen brightness, keyboard backlight, and sounds using function keys). 

[Method 2] I was also able to install Windows 10 using a bootable USB stick (created by Bootcamp app) but built-in keyboard, trackpad, and USB mouse weren't working when starting Windows for the first time so I couldn't even install the drivers from Bootcamp Support. I had to press and hold down the power button to shutdown the machine and start it again; then Windows did some repair tasks and rebooted the machine, and the keyboard and USB mouse started to work so I was able to install the drivers from Bootcamp Support and then Windows updates. However, sound and external monitor weren't working. Sound issue could be fixed by the steps described in the section below, but external monitor couldn't, even after installing the monitor driver and firmware updates and manually updating the graphics card's driver).

Fixing WiFi, Camera, Bluetooth, and external monitor

I got WiFi, Camera, Bluetooth, and SD card reader working using Bootcamp Support version 5.1 (intended for Windows 7 and 8 only), but I had to manually install them one by one, by clicking on their corresponding setup files located in the Broadcom and Apple folders the Bootcamp Support file. I also manually installed other drivers that came along, thinking they might be useful though I didn't know what they were.

After installing Windows Updates and some drivers from Bootcamp Support, I was able to adjust screen brightnes (in Settings > System > Display) and use my external monitor connecting through Thunderbolt-to-VGA adapter.

Fixing Sound

At first, I followed everything from the video below (I backed it up here in case it gets deleted from the channel).

Here is the steps from the original post that the video referred to.

The sound still didn't work for me though it did for many others on Youtube. Under Sound, video, and game controllers section in the Device Manager settings, the sound driver got a yellow exclamation mark on it as shown here:

Then, I right clicked on it and select Update driver > Browse my computer for drivers. Then, in the Search for drivers in this location box, I browsed to DisplayAudio folder in the downloaded Bootcamp Support file and clicked OK. For my case, the location is C:\Users\Bros\Documents\bootcamp5.1.5769\$WinPEDriver$\IntelHDGraphics64\DisplayAudio.

The yellow exclamation mark was gone but I still couldn't hear any sounds. 

After that, I installed this driver CirrusAudioCS4208x64.exe from the Bootcamp Support file but still no luck. For my case, the file location is C:\Users\Bros\Documents\bootcamp5.1.5769\BootCamp\Drivers\Cirrus.

It worked after installing another driver, CirrusAudioCS4206x64.exe, located in the same folder. And the sound drivers in the Device Manager settings updated their names as shown below.

My eyes got swollen after staring at Windows 8 on Macbook Pro for a few hours

I'm using Macbook Pro 13'' late 2011. I installed Windows 8 on it several months ago. I hadn't had any problems with my eyes. 

However a few days ago, I watched a movie for a few hours at night and then i went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, my eyes got swollen. At first, i didn't think staring at my laptop long was the culprit because my eyes had been fine for months. Then, I realized that I accidentally modified the Display profile Color Management settings. 

The cause of the problem is I changed the Device Profile under Windows Color System Defaults section to Apple RGB. Switching it back to sRGB61966-2.1 solved the issue. I couldn't see the difference between those two profiles, but Apple RGB profile did hurt my eyes.

Mac OS X Yosemite and laters hurt my eyes

I had been using MacBook Pro 13'' late 2011 for a several years by staring at the screen for all day without any problems. One day, I upgraded from OSX Lion 10.7 to OSX Yosemite 10.10 and then I got headache and eye strain after staring at the screen for about 15 minutes. When I downgraded it back to OS X Lion, the problem was gone. Obviously, the OS X version is the culprit. I then tried OSX v10.11 and macOS Sierra v10.12, and I got the same problem. After that, I bought a MacBook Air 11'' mid 2013 and I experienced the same.

At first, I thought it was because of the new UI design was too bright (not clear) and the font did not look clear so I tried to calibrate the display to make it darker and increase contrast in Accessibility. Everything was better. It was clearer and easier to see. However, the problem still existed. I even copied the Display profile (*.icc files) from OS X Lion and used it on those new OSXs but no luck.

I gave up and sticked to OS X Mavericks for a while. Note that OS X Mavericks and priors are fine. In the beginning of September 2017, I started to learn Swift 4. As Swift 4 is compatible only with OS X 10.10 and laters, I tried to make research on this problem again. I went through several forums and someone said she had the same problem but her eyes seemed to be better when she changed the Display profile to  "sRGB IEC61966-2.1". She said she couldn't see the difference when switching to that profile, but she felt better with switching to that profile. I tried it too but it didn't work. 

After that, I tried the Apple RGB profile, which I copied from Windows 8 I installed on my MacBook Pro 13'', and my eye condition seemed to be 90% better. No pain in the eyes anymore. I could star at the screen for hours. Note that the other display profiles from Windows 8 didn't solve my problem. However, I still felt a little bit fatigue and got a little bit headache though. 

To improve the fatigue eye condition, I then changed the Color Temperature in Night Shift setting to warmer may be at 40%. The headache issue resulted from small system font size. I increased it by decreasing the screen resolution from 1366x768 to 1280x720.

Overall, switching the Display profile, increasing the Color Temperature, and increasing system font size did improve my eye condition about 90% after I've tested it for a few hours. After using it for a few days, I feel my condition has 99% improved. I think my eyes is getting used to it.

No Sound on Windows 8 on Macbook Pro 13'' Late 2011

I'm using Macbook Pro 13'' Late 2011 and my CD ROM drive is broken so i installed Windows 8 using USB drive instead.

The bootable USB drive created by Boot Camp Assistant didn't work. When Boot Camp Assistant restart the machine, the machine did boot from the USB but then i got a black screen with the message that "No bootable medium found....". Note that this way worked on my friend's Macbook Pro 13'' 2012 model.

I then used Disk Utility application to create a Windows 8 bootable USB stick on my Macbook Air 11'' mid 2013. It worked on both my Macbook Air and Macbook Pro. I could setup Windows 8 successfully on both machines but sound problem still happened on Macbook Pro.

After that, I tried Driver Genius program to backup the working sound driver on Windows 8 from my Macbook Air and even from my friend's Macbook Pro then restored it on my Macbook Pro but still no luck.

Some people on the net said because I installed it using EFI and then the sound driver didn't load properly (only with my current model of Macbook Pro). Installing it using Legacy Boot Loader (Master Boot Record), the sound really worked. Here is how i did it http://vathanakmao-technotes.blogspot.com/2017/01/install-windows-7-on-macbook-pro-using.html

Can't have 3 partitions on Macbook Pro 13'' Late 2011

The MBR for Windows partition was corrupted when I divided the disk into 3 partitions, two for Mac OS and Windows and one for data.

At first, I installed Windows 7 my Macbook Pro 13'' late 2011 and the problem i couldn't fix is the palmrest area was usually very warm; the heat is unbearable if you rest your hands on it for about half an hour or longer. I tried many ways such as installing Windows updates, using MacFan Control application, and setting the maximum processor power to 90%. But, the heat was still unbearable.

After that, I accidentally corrupted the file system on all hard drives when i tried to shrink a partition on Windows so I had to install it again but I installed Windows 8.1 this time. While setting up Windows, i got this error message "Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only......". It's because disk of MBR style can't have many primary partitions. I'm not how many but my disk already had three. I followed this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb6tECZP6WE fix but the whole hard drive has to be formatted again. At the installation screen, I pressed Shift + F10 then a command prompt opened and I typed the following commands.

> diskpart
> list disk
> select disk <number>
I had two disks, the hard drive of my machine and USB drive of Windows installation files. The zero number represented the hard drive of my machine.
> clean
The clean commands formatted the whole hard drive.
> convert gpt
> exit
You have to type exit command so that the change is saved.

It seemed like Windows 8 worked better on my Macbook Pro. The palmrest area was much cooler, almost like normal even though I have about 20 tabs of Chrome browser opening and I hadn't even tried the cooling methods i did on Windows 7.

I had three partitions for MacOS, Windows, and data (extFAT). Only Windows partition was bootable so i installed MacOS on another partition. After the installation completed, I couldn't boot into Windows anymore. The Windows partition had been corrupted. I don't know why but seemed like I couldn't have more than 2 primary partitions on the hard disk.

Then, I removed other partitions so i had only MacOS installed. I created another two partitions, NTFS and Mac Extended Journal (for data). Then, I installed Windows on the NTFS partition. The Windows file system didn't corrupt anymore. But, i couldn't see the partition of type Mac Extended Journal from within Windows; i could see only MacOS partition. In Drive Management, the Mac Extended Journal for storing data shown as unallocated space s i created a new partition on it using extFAT file format. Damn! I couldn't boot into Windows again. The master boot record corrupted again.

At last, I successfully solved the problem by reformatted the whole drive and created 3 partitions of types: Mac Extended Journal (for MacOS), NTFS (for Windows), NTFS (for data). The Windows partition didn't corrupted anymore and i could see all partitions from within Windows.