Phill201905

Fun and Games

Windows on Mac

Apple computers are not cheap! Having spent a lot of money on a MacBook or Mac Mini, after a few years, Apple will no longer support the model that you bought. This means that it becomes impossible to upgrade macOS to later versions. It will then become impossible to upgrade or install applications that require the later versions of macOS!

These now unsupported Mac machines are still powerful computers. They can easily run Linux and Windows 10 operating systems. MacOS for Intel machines provide a Bootcamp utility that can install Windows on a machine’s hard drive and it provides Windows drivers for the mac hardware, including mouse; keyboard, and WiFi.

Unfortunately, Bootcamp has been removed from macOS for Apple Silicon. The main reason for this is that Windows will not run on Apple Silicon CPUs unless Microsoft and Apple agree to work together on this which is unlikely.

Installing a second operating system on a Mac’s hard drive requires resizing the disk partitions. This is risky and there may not be enough space for both macOs and Windows or Linux.

There is another solution which is to create a bootable external USB hard drive containing Windows or Linux that can be booted from a Mac. Bootcamp does not support this approach. It is however quite easy to create the bootable disk without Bootcamp.

We will now show how to install Windows 10 on an external USB hard drive and boot it from a Mac. The installation process needs to be done on the target Mac.

Hardware

An external USB hard drive is required. It need to have enough capacity to install Windows and any applications. It is of course possible to have a second external drive for application data. An SSD drive is better as it will be faster.

A USB memory stick is required for Windows to install the Bootcamp drivers. This needs to have a capacity of at least 5GB.

Software

If you haven’t already done so download and install Oracle Virtual Box.

Download the Windows 10 ISO. It is over 6GB and will take a while.

Plug the memory stick into the Mac. From Finder, go to Applications, then go to Utilities. Run Boot Camp Assistant. From the top bar select Action and Download Windows Support Software. Select the USB memory stick as the destination. It will create a directory called Windows Support. The download process takes a while. Unmount and remove the USB memory stick when finished.

Create Windows Boot Disk

Plug the external USB drive into the Mac. From Finder, go to Applications, then go to Utilities. Run Disk Utility. The external USB drive will be at the bottom on the left hand column. It’s name will be the device manufacturer’s name. Select this device. The details will appear on the right. Make a note of the device name at the bottom right. It will probably be disk2 or disk3.

Select Erase from the top bar. A dialog will appear with three entries. In the Name: box give it a name like Win10Mac1. In the Format: box select MS-DOS (FAT). In the Scheme: box select GUID Partition Map. Hit Erase. If the drive gets mounted, unmount it. For older Macs you should set the scheme to Master Boot Record.

Open a terminal window such as iTerm.

You need to give VirtualBox access to the external USB drive. This operation requires root privileges using sudo. Type the following command making sure that disk2 at the end of the line is replaced by the actual disk number noted earlier. WARNING if you get this wrong you can erase one of your disks and lose all data on it!

sudo VBoxManage createmedium disk --filename=bootcamp_mac.vmdk --variant=RawDisk --format=VMDK --property RawDrive=/dev/disk2

You will need to enter your Mac login password. You should get a Medium created message.

Start Virtual Box with root privileges so that it can access the USB drive.

sudo /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VirtualBox

The Oracle VirtualBox Manager screen will appear.

  • Hit New on the top menu.

  • Give it a name such as Win10MacMini.

  • Select the Windows 10 ISO image that was downloaded earlier.

  • Check Skip Unattended Installation.

  • Hit Hard Disk at the bottom. New options will appear.

  • Select Use an Existing Virtual Hard Disk File.

  • Select bootcamp_mac.vmdk.

  • Hit the Finish button.

A screen containing the details of the virtual mmachine will appear.

  • Hit the Settings button on the top menu.

  • Select System on the left.

  • Uncheck Floppy under Boot Order as you probably won’t have one!

  • Check Enable EFI (specialOSes only) at the bottom under Extended Features if you formatted the drive using GUID schema.

  • Hit OK.

Hit the Start button at the top right. A new window will appear. You need to be quick. Hit the space key to boot from the ISO image.

If you aren’t fast enough, close the window, shut down the virtual machine and try again.

A message Auto capture keyboard will appear on the right, clock on the right of it to get rid of it.

  • Change any language, time and keyboard options if required. Hit Next.

  • Hit Install now.

  • Enter a product key if you have one, otherwide select I don’t have a product key. You don’t actually need one!

  • Select Widows 10 Home and hit Next.

  • Accept the licence terms.

  • Select Custom.

  • Select Drive 0 Partition 2 if there are two partitions, otherwise select Drive 0 Partition 1.

  • Hit Format and then OK.

  • The warning should disappear.

  • Hit Next.

The installation will now start. Do not leave it unattended!. At the Getting finished step, Windows will reboot. You must not let this happen! When the rebooting in 10 seconds screen appears, close the window and stop the virtual machine. It the reboot happens Windows will configure itself for the virtual machine and you will need to redo the installation!

Tidy Up

Delete the VirtualBox device to prevent accidentally deleting important data.

sudo rm bootcamp_mac.vmdk

Boot the Windows Drive

Ensure that the Windows drive is plugged into the Mac.

  • Shut down the Mac machine.

  • Press the on button and immediately hold down the ALT key.

  • After up to 15 seconds a screen will appear showing available disks.

  • Use the arrow keys to select EFI Boot or Windows.

  • Hit Enter to boot the extenal drive.

Windows should start up and configure itself for the machine it is running on. This will take some time.

After a while Windows will reboot. You need to hold down the ALT key when the screen goes black, otherwise it will boot into macOS. If this happens repeat the boot steps above.

Windows will continue its slow setup.

Install Boot Camp Drivers

Once you get control of Windows, plug in the USB memory stick.

  • Open Windows Explorer.

  • Select the memory stick,it will probably be D:.

  • Open the WindowSupport directory.

  • Open the BootCamp directory.

  • Double click on setup to start the Apple driver installation.

You will be asked to restart the computer. Remember to hold the ALT key down during reboot. Reomve the USB memory stick.

Upgrade to Windows 11

You will not be able to upgrade to Windows 11 because the Mac doesn’t have the security hardware that Microsoft now insist that your machine has. There is however a workaround that enables the Microsoft security checks to be bypassed! You will need to create a bootable USB drive for this with a capacity of at least 10GB.

The first step can be done on any Windows machine, which can be the Windows 10 we have created.

Go to Rufus and download version 4.6 of rufus-4.6.exe.

Download the Windows 11 ISO.

Plug in the USB drive. Run rufus-4.6.exe.

The default options disable the security checks and allow Windows 11 to be installed.

  • Hit Show advanced drive properties.

  • Select List USB Hard Drives.

  • Select the target USB drive.

  • Select the Windows 11 ISO image.

  • Hit Start to create a boot disk from the Windows 11 ISO with checks disabled.

Install Windows 11 On a USB Drive

To make a Windows 11 boot disk you need the modified Windows 11 ISO on a USB drive as describe in the previous section.

You also need a target USB drive. This needs to be formatted NTFS on a Windows machine. Plug both drives into the Mac, starting with the target disk.

In Disk Utility verify the devices the target disk should be disk2 and the Windows 11 disk3. If they are different modify the disk mumbers in the following commands. These commands create VirtualBox drives.

sudo VBoxManage createmedium disk --filename=bootcamp_mac.vmdk --variant=RawDisk --format=VMDK --property RawDrive=/dev/disk2
sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename windows11.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk3

Make sure that both disks are not mounted. You can check for entries in Finder and click on the arrow to the right of the drive name to unmount.

Now start VirtualBox with root privileges.

sudo /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VirtualBox

  • Hit New to create a new Virtual Machine.

  • Give it a name like Win11Mac.

  • There is not ISO image.

  • Make sure that the vesion is Window 11 (64-bit).

  • Select Hard Disk.

  • Select Use an Existing Virtual Hard Disk File.

  • Select bootcamp_mac.vmdk.

  • Hit Finish.

Now add the Windows 11 install USB.

  • Select Settings.

  • Select Storage.

  • Select bootcamp_mac.vmdk and change the Hard Disk to SATA Port 2.

  • Hit the Add Attachment + icon at the bottom and slect Hard Disk.

  • Select window11.vmdk.

  • Hit Choose.

  • The disk windows11.vmdk should be at the top of the list on SATA Disk 0.

  • Hit OK

Now hit Start to run the Virtual Machine. It should boot the Windows 11 install USB. It will take a while to start the installation.

  • Select language and time preferences.

  • Select keyboard layout.

  • Select Install Windows 11 and check that you agree to everything being deleted.

  • Select I don’t have a product key.

  • Select Windows 11 Home.

  • Accept the licence terms.

Now we need to format the target disk.

  • Select Disk 1 Partition 1.

  • Select Delete Partition.

  • Select *Disk 1 Unallocated Space.

  • Select Create Partition.

  • Three partitions will be created on Disk 1.

  • Select Disk 1 Partition 3.

  • Hit Next.

  • Hit Install.

Allow the installation to proceed until it wants to reboot. Don’t let this happen by stopping the Virtual Machine.

Boot the newly created drive and install boot camp drivers as described above.