I recently had install Windows 7 on my Late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina. How to install Windows on your Mac with Boot Camp - Apple Support. Boot Camp Assistant guides you through installing Windows on your Mac. Open this app from the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder. Then follow the onscreen instructions to repartition your startup disk and download related software drivers for Windows.
Prologue So for those that know me 'round these parts, you're probably aware that I'm not the biggest fan of Bootcamp. It's slow, and to put it bluntly, somewhat dangerous. Can't tell you how many times I've seen people get the 'no bootable device' error after performing seemingly innocuous things such as add a new partition or upgrade to a new version of OS X. For advanced users wondering why this is, it's due to Bootcamp installing Windows in an emulated BIOS environment mode,. To avoid all this, I've chosen to bypass Bootcamp and install Windows in my Mac's native EFI mode.
The results have been excellent, so in this guide I will outline the steps required for pulling this off yourself. If you have a newer Mac (i.e. A model from 2013 or later), you're in luck; Bootcamp actually installs Windows in EFI mode as a standard. If you're running a Mac older than this however, read on for how to achieve the same thing with your machine.
First, before deciding whether to take this leap, consider for yourself the pros and cons: Benefits. Dramatically improved Windows boot time. Free rein to alter your disk's partitions in the future, as well as upgrade or reinstall OS X.
Works with drives larger than 2 terabytes. Drawbacks.
Much more complex to set up. Not for the faint of heart!. Does not work with Windows 7; only works with Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and Windows 10. OS X will need to be backed up, erased, and reinstalled. Only accounts for the presence of one internal hard drive. If you have more than one, including if you have a 'Fusion Drive,' check back later. So, interested?
Let's get started! Preparing to Erase OS X Before installing Windows 8, your drive will need to be erased. If you would like to retain your OS X setup, make sure it is backed up if it isn't already. Time Machine is of course a great way to do this, as are disk cloning tools such as. If using Time Machine, you will need a way to booting into an OS X recovery environment after your drive is completely erased.
If you have a Mac which is from 2010 or later, it supports internet recovery, no external drive required. Otherwise, you will need to create a recovery disk using, or an entire OS X installer using and a copy of OS X downloaded from the App Store. Creating a Windows 8 Installer Next, you will need to make a Windows 8 USB installer out of an ISO. The easiest way of obtaining an ISO is to. If you have a retail DVD, as well.
To create the USB installer, open Bootcamp Assistant from your Applications' Utilities installer and select the options for 'Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk' and 'Download the latest Windows support software from Apple.' If the 'Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk' option is not available, or if Bootcamp Assistant claims your Mac does not support booting Windows from a USB drive, this can be overcome. Installing Windows Make sure the Windows USB drive is connected to your computer, then restart while holding the option key to display the boot chooser.
A USB drive labelled 'EFI Boot' should appear. Select that, and your Mac should boot into the Windows installer! When the Windows installer reaches the setup screen, hit shift+F10, which will bring up a command prompt.
Enter the following commands one-by-one to reformat your internal drive and add the supporting partitions: diskpart select disk 0 clean convert gpt create partition efi size=200 format fs=fat32 create partition msr size=128 For the next part, you will need to have decided how much space you would like to dedicate to Windows, then calculate that amount in terms of megabytes. The units used by diskpart are such that one gigabyte is equal to 1,024 megabytes, so if you would like your Windows partition to be 100 gigabytes, you will be using the number 102400 in the following command: create partition primary size=102400 Finally, format the new partition and exit: format fs=ntfs quick label=Windows exit You can now close the command prompt window, and proceed to follow along with the guided Windows installation.
Once completed, you should have an operational Windows system! Once booted into it, go ahead and and install the Window support software that Bootcamp Assistant placed on your USB drive.
At this point, your Mac should be booting into Windows automatically every time you restart. Don't worry though, we'll have OS X back up and running soon. Reinstating OS X If you created an external OS X recovery drive to boot from, you may now reboot while holding the option key and select it. If you are relying in internet recovery, simply reboot while holding command+option+R and you should be greeted by a spinning globe. Once in the recovery system, open Disk Utility. Select your disk and navigate to the 'Partitions' tab. You will see a large empty space following your Windows partition.
We will be adding two new partitions to fill this space, so click the '+' button twice. The first new partition will be your OS X partition.
Set its format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and name it something like 'Macintosh HD' or 'Mac OS X.' The second new partition will be what allows you to choose Windows to boot from. Set its format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), name it 'Windows Boot,' and set its size to a mere 128 MB. Click 'Apply' and allow the process to complete! Once that's done, you may reinstate your data to the OS X partition from the Time Machine backup, or use Disk Utility to restore a CarbonCopyCloner clone to it, or simply install OS X from scratch. Enabling Windows Boot Option Once you've booted into your newly reinstated OS X system, we must now configure that 'Windows Boot' partition we previously created. This will allow Windows to show up in the boot manager when holding the option key on startup.
To do this, we will be setting up an EFI script which points your Mac to Windows's bootloader. To run EFI scripts, you will need a simple EFI shell program, which you can. Copy that 'ShellFull.efi' file to your 'Windows Boot' partition. To create the script itself, open Terminal from your Applications' Utilities menu, and copy and paste in the following line: sudo nano /Volumes/Windows Boot/startup.nsh A Terminal-based text editor will open up, into which you paste the following line: blk0: EFI Microsoft Boot bootmgfw.efi To save the file and exit, hit control+X, then the Y key, and then finally the Return key. Check to make sure the file named 'startup.nsh' is now in your 'Windows Boot' partition. Finally, we are now going to mark this partition as bootable! Copy and paste the following line into Terminal to do so: sudo bless -folder /Volumes/Windows Boot -file /Volumes/Windows Boot/ShellFull.efi -options 'set StartupDelay 0' -label Windows That's it!
You can now reboot while holding the option key, and you should be presented with both your Mac and Windows options to boot from. Try the Windows one and make sure it works! If upon attempting to boot into Windows you are greeted with the persistent error 0xc00000e (or something of the like), then Disk Utility has mistakenly attempted to 'fix' a nonexistent Bootcamp setup. This can be repaired by downloading and installing, then running the following in Terminal: sudo gdisk /dev/disk0.
Yes, this will cause the 'Windows Boot' partition to appear when booting into OS X. Here's how to change that:. Download and install, then run it for your boot partition by pasting the following line into Terminal: sudo gdisk /dev/disk0.
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At the prompt, type 'p' and hit Return. This will print out a list of your partitions. Note the number for your 'Windows Boot' partition.
Type 't' and hit Return, then enter the partition number as you determined. Enter AB00 (A, B, zero, zero) as the partition's new type. Save and exit by entering 'w,' then 'Y' when prompted. That's it; the 'Windows Boot' partition still exists, but it will now be hidden on startup unless you specifically mount it. If you would like to mount it in the future, you can do so from Disk Utility, or use the following Terminal command: diskutil mount /Volumes/Windows Boot. Just finished wiping and installing windows 10 technical preview and Yosemite.
After finishing everything I tested booting into windows and I found that I now have two windows bootable drives in the boot menu. One called 'windows' and the other 'EFI Boot'. Both boot into windows but the efi boot has an error that passes after 5 seconds. And the other just boots normally. Not a big deal just wondering why this would happen? Or why I need two for that matter Other than that everything works great!
Ah, that 'EFI Boot' one is not necessary. Seems at one point, Microsoft started putting an additional boot loader in a location where it was automatically detectable. You can simply move it out of the way:. In OS X, mount the EFI system partition using Terminal: diskutil mount disk0s1. A new volume named 'EFI' (or something similar) should appear in the Finder.
Open that, and in it, open the 'EFI' folder. You should see three folders; 'Apple,' 'boot,' and 'Microsoft.'
Rename the 'boot' folder to 'boot.backup'. Reboot while holding the option key to make sure everything looks good, and make sure your Windows system is still bootable. Yes, but it should only show for a few milliseconds rather than doing the 5-second countdown. In OS X, make sure 'Windows Boot' is mounted, then do this Terminal command again: sudo bless -folder /Volumes/Windows Boot -file /Volumes/Windows Boot/ShellFull.efi -options 'set StartupDelay 0' -label Windows Make sure to copy and paste it into Terminal rather than trying to retype it. Also, copy it by triple-clicking the line rather than clicking and dragging; that way the entire thing gets copied in exactly.
BootCamp Assistant is an application made by Apple that makes it easy to install and run Windows on a Mac. It’s not absolutely necessary to use the BootCamp Assistant however it does somewhat simply the process. It does this by automatically creating a separate partition on your hard drive and then uses that partition to run Windows on the Mac. The steps taken by BootCamp to install Windows on a Mac can also all be accomplished by using Disk Utility so we’ll go through both methods. Understanding the Basics.
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Understand BootCamp BootCamp Assistant does two things, it downloads all the drivers necessary for Windows to operate properly and makes it easy to partition your hard drive into 2 partitions. One partition will be used by your Mac to run Mac OS X and the other partition will be used to run Windows. Basically what the drivers do, is allow your built-in camera, special keyboard function (like volume), magic mouse and trackpad to work properly. For example, without the drivers, when you press the volume button on your Apple keyboard it won’t do anything because there are no driver to tell Windows what that button does. The Windows support drivers should be installed even if you don’t plan on using the built-in camera or any of the other Apple hardware. It basically helps your Mac run Windows properly.
Next, why do I have to make a new partition to install Windows? Well the reason is that Windows and Mac don’t run on the same format. Macs run on Mac OS X (Journaled) and Windows runs on NTFS. Partitioning splits your hard drive into 2 separate sections, each with its own format. This means that your Mac will continue to run on Mac OS X (Journaled) and Windows will be able to run on NTFS.
Think of it this way, the soon to be roommates both live in the same house but each get their own room customized to their own liking. It’s not necessary to use BootCamp Assistant since it can all be done with Disk Utility, however I’ll go through that at the bottom of this article. Preparing your Hard Drive with BootCamp. Partition with BootCamp Whenever you do anything to modify the hard drive you should always first; it’s very unlikely that something will go wrong but best be on the safe side. After making a backup, open BootCamp, it can be found in the Applications/Utilities folder or by searching for it in spotlight. Here you will see the options that allows you to “Download the latest Windows support software from Apple” and “Install Windows 7 or later version”.
Lets handle downloading the latest Windows support software first. BootCamp assistant wants you to download the support drivers directly onto a properly formatted USB flash drive. If you go this route, your USB drive has to be formatted as MS-DOS (FAT), this is because Windows can not read the default Mac format.
It’s not necessary to go this route as the support drivers can be downloaded directly from the Apple website, even after you’ve installed Windows on your Mac. I’ve already covered how to format a drive, read the guide here if needed: If you’d rather skip this step, just uncheck “Download the latest Windows support software from Apple”.
Once you’ve got Windows installed on your Mac, it can be downloaded from. Next, onto partitioning the hard drive. Well first, it’s not always necessary to partition your drive.
If you have more than one internal hard drive, and want to use it solely for Windows then there is no reason to partition it. Simply format it during the Windows installation. The same thing goes for an external hard drive that you want to use solely to run Windows on your Mac. If you do want to partition your drive, BootCamp makes it really easy to do.
It show two sections on the partitions page, OS X and Windows. Just drag the slider left and right to decide on how much space you want to dedicate to the Windows partition. For a bare minimum you should at least dedicate 20GB. It depends on what you want to do with this partition however. If you’re a gamer and plan on installing many games, you should probably dedicate more that 20GB to Windows.
I’d recommend around 60GB-100GB, however it depends entirely on how you plan to use Windows on your Mac. Once you’ve decided on the amount of space you’d like to dedicate to Windows click the “Install” button. BootCamp Assistant will immediately start partitioning your drive. It usually takes around a minute to complete. Next your Mac will restart.
Make sure your Windows install disk is inserted as it will be needed right after the restart. Installing Windows on a Mac. Installing Windows 8 Once your Mac restarts, it will load up the Windows installation files. Be patient, it can take a while, for me it took around 3 – 4 minutes. Once the install files are booted up, the first thing you’ll have to do is agree to the terms and conditions, after reading the 25 page policy of course Next, you’ll be presented with two options, Upgrade or Custom. Choose Custom: Install Windows only (Advanced). In the next screen all the partitions on your Mac will be shown.
If you used BootCamp the drive will be named BOOTCAMP. Select the drive that you’re going to install Windows on, double-check to make sure it’s the correct drive. Windows will show, “Windows can’t be installed on Drive 0 partition 4”. This is because BootCamp wasn’t able to format the drive to NTFS (this is normal). So we need to format this drive to NTFS, luckily it’s really easy. After you’ve selected the correct drive, click “Drive options (Advanced)”. A little menu with the option to format will appear.
Click on “Format”, once done, click “Delete”. Within a couple of seconds the drive will be formatted to the Windows NTFS format. The partition/drive will now be labelled, “Unallocated”, which is what we want. Now that it’s formatted, all that remains to be done is to simply click the “Next” button and Windows will start to be installed. The entire process should take about 30-40 minutes on a regular drive, and will automatically restart multiple times during the process. After it’s all complete and you’ve setup your user account (Windows will walk you through it), the BootCamp support drivers will need to be installed.
Simply use the support software downloaded earlier or download it now from the Apple website and install it. Install Windows on a Mac without BootCamp. Partition or Format Installing Windows on a Mac without BootCamp is pretty much the same thing as installing it with BootCamp. For instance, the only thing BootCamp really did was download the support drivers and then partition the drive.
To do it without BootCamp simply open Disk Utility and select the drive you want to partition. Once selected, click the partition tab and then the little “+” symbol. Decide on the size of the partition, give it a name and choose a format. I suggest MS-DOS (FAT), however it doesn’t really matter as you are going to format it to NTFS later on when going through the Windows install process. Next simply restart your computer with the Windows installation disk inserted. If Windows does not automatically start up when you restart your computer hold down the “Options” key when your Mac restarts/starts up.
This will bring into view all the media attached to your Mac. Simply select the Windows installation disk and off you go. Want to run Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously without having to restart every time? Read my other. We Have a brand New Mackbook Pro with Retina Display trying to install Windows 8, major problems with getting the thing to boot of the usb flash drive, on the occasions we have, included the latest boot camp 5.0.5xxx windows support files the system often BOSDs, or does on shutdown on my 4the attempt to get this to wotk, have tried several different thumb drives. Cannot get it to boot from the windows concistantly, at one stage I thought it was the External 1 Gig Ethernet adaptor hijacking the boot process!
This is reallt flakey, wasted days on it! Read every forum. Running out of ideas! Hello Dragosh, I’ve never seen that before, however I did a quick google search.
From what I read, there may be something wrong with your Windows install disk. There is a lot more information I suggest a quick google search for “CDBOOT MEMORY OVERFLOW ERROR”. I’ll include some quick recommendation, but I can’t guarantee any of it will work: 1. Remove all devices from your computer. If you have a USB device connected or anything else remove/unplug it. Try giving the Windows install disk a quick clean.
If nothing works, you could always create a Windows install USB drive.