Windows 7 Install Mac Without Bootcamp
Thaiel Trask
I currently own a Mac and would like to install the Windows operating system on it. However, I want to explore alternative methods as I'd like to avoid using Boot Camp Assistant, the default utility provided by Apple for this purpose. Unfortunately, I'm unaware of any other reliable methods or tools to accomplish this task.
Hence, I kindly request your assistance and expertise in guiding me through the process of installing Windows on my Mac without using Boot Camp Assistant. I understand the importance of compatible software and the potential risks involved in altering the operating system, so I seek lawful and secure methods only.
It is still possible to install Windows 10/8/7 on an Intel based Mac. For dual-boot, you can go with Bootcamp Assistant if it is available on your Mac. If not, then you should first make a Windows bootable USB on Mac and install Windows from the USB drive.
It is possible to use the Windows ARM version with a Parallels' VM, but there are a lot of limitations & restrictions with this option (still requires a proper Windows' license). Both Microsoft and Parallels have some documentation on how this works and the various limitations & restrictions.
Another option would be to use the third party UTM app which uses QEMU at its core which is a free open source machine emulator & virtualizer to mimic different CPU architectures so you can run an OS for a completely different CPU architecture on an Apple Silicon Mac. With UTM you can install the Intel version of Windows OS (you will need a proper Windows' license). However, there are a lot of limitations....the performance will be slow since you are emulating a different system plus running a virtualized instance of an OS as well. Plus you won't have access to any GPU hardware acceleration. For some apps this option may work fine, but for others it will be insufficient.
When you post a question such as yours, it would serve you better to state that you have an Intel or Apple Silicon architecture Mac running a specific operating system version. That reduces the fishing expedition as to what specifically will work in your case.
Microsoft has only publicly sanctioned Parallels for running Windows 11 ARM on Apple Silicon Macs. VMware is now offering a free, non-commercial user license for their Fusion VM client, but very likely will want personal information that at minimum may result in ramped email SPAM. Nothing is truly free with these vendors.
Stack Social has Windows 11 Pro licenses in the $25 range (today) and you should have a Microsoft account because an aspect of the purchase process requires one to sign into a Microsoft account so the license purchase is registered with Microsoft. I purchased Office 2021 for Mac and Office 2021 Professional Plus for Windows through them and never paid more than $35 each.
The problem with this is that Windows WILL NOT install onto the disk because it needs MBR on the destination disk, MacOS REALLY TRIES to use GPT, which is extremely annoying, and the only thing I've been able to do to temporarily make this not the case is to just use Bootcamp which I can no longer do due to having MacOS 10.8.5 on one partition and MacOS 10.13 on another partition, and Bootcamp not even trying to do anything when there are already 2 partitions. I'm trying to install Windows on a 3rd partition. This is after I already installed Windows BEFORE I restored my 10.8.5 partition, so bootcamp would actually work, but as soon as I put the 10.8.5 partition back, Windows would no longer boot, and trying to simply reinstall it on that same partition would say that the disk is "of the GPT partition style". Whoever made this a thing needs to go under the jail, but I really need to do this. Any ideas?
I would know, I did try it on my fully maxed out i9 MacBook Pro, my M2 Pro Mac mini, my M1 Mac mini, an M1 MacBook Air I no longer have, my 16-inch 2021 MacBook Pro, and my 14-inch 2021 MacBook Pro. Complete garbage tier Windows installation on all of them. Windows is already horrible, making it go through translation layers is a terrible idea, plus Windows 11 sucks more than the rest. I would never use such a garbolium tier OS. My main gaming PC runs Windows 10, which is bricking itself as we speak. Not even kidding.
Actually this thread was started by someone asking how to run Windows WITHOUT bootcamp. And that person never clarified what type of machine they had. Therefore, it's perfectly reasonable for people to ask you for more details about what you're asking. Remember, everyone here is a voluteer.
What you would do and what someone else with different knowledge and experience might do are not necessarily the same. It doesn't do make assumptions here. Give that the original poster never posted again, we don't know what they wanted.
If you need help, I suggest you start your own thread as it appears that any issues you may have are different than the original poster. Also, posting in old threads is rarely as effective as starting a new one.
Download the Boot Camp drivers to a pen-drive, format the device using the Windows installer before installing. Run the bootcamp.exe once Windows is up and you'll have all the drivers you'll ever need. Make sure you get the right drivers for your device.
Open the Boot Camp application on OS X and download the Boot Camp Support Software, i.e. a package containing all the Windows drivers you'll need to install and smoothly run Windows 10. You can download that package via the Action menu entry in the Boot Camp application.
Chose the Custom installation. You'll be asked to chose the drive where to install Windows to, but you probably won't see any storage device. Hence, insert the Boot Camp drivers USB pen and press Load drivers. There, you can browse the pen and select the Apple SSD driver (I don't remember what is the exact folder you have to select, but it's not hard to find out).
Most people are going to assume that you are going the boot camp route. However, have you tried a fully UEFI Windows 10 install? Your update does not detail very much so it is important to possibly include pics since command line output will be limited preinstall. This is also treading along as unsupported but if you want to get your hands dirty it is an EXTREMELY good learning experience.
If you are able to get into the Windows install prompt, then you may run into issues with the installer detecting the hard drive. You may need to have a windows equivalent driver that you load via the installer to ensure your hardware is supported. Again it is dependent on what you see.
You must first use bootcamp with osx to create the partition. Once the partition is made and windows is working, then you can delete osx and allocate the memory to windows. You can see in the image below that only 200 is needed by the internal mac os (to boot the mac and so forth). Other than that, my bootcamp is the only os on the disk. Now I don't know what you'd do without a recovery partition if you wanted osx back for whatever reason. I don't see any reason to do so because having one os is much better than 2.
Step 1: Download and install unetbootin from here. Then run it and select Disk Image option on the screen. Select ISO option from the dropdown menu next to Disk Image text if it is not already selected. Then press the button with three dots (...) and select your Windows ISO image (assuming you already have one). Lastly, select your USB from the dropdown menu next to Drive text and press OK. This will burn the ISO image to the USB.
This will show you all of the drives connected to your computer. Your USB is something like /dev/disk1s1 or /dev/disk1s2 (but definitely not /dev/disk0). You can understand which one is your USB by searching for your USB's label.
Step 2: Now open up the Bootcamp assistant for the last time. Once it's opened, select Action > Download Windows Helper Software. This will download Bootcamp helper. Select the target as your desktop and continue.
Step 4.1: This will destroy any data on your other volumes! Delete all of your partitions one by one. Once there is only free space left, create a new partition and install Windows on there.
Step 5: Once you fully setup Windows, select your USB from Windows Explorer and go to WindowsSupport folder. In that folder, run the setup program. Install it like a normal program and you are done!
You'll be losing something like one hour and 10GB of harddisk space if you install (restore) OSX and install bootcamp, but you'll save lots of time since bootcamp will do the EFI booting configurating, partitions creating and shrinking, providing mac hardware drivers etc.
when you reboot with your windows 7 cd, it will do some initial instally-things and then reboot your computer. You have to hold down the "alt" key when it's rebooting and then select the hard drive to boot from, otherwise you will be stuck with a white/grey screen.
As others have said, it's probably best to just use bootcamp and set windows as the default. Unless you're putting everything on one big raid volume and booting straight from that, osx isn't really hurting anything except a few megs off your boot volume, but that's not typically a problem.
Not sure if you can simply install Windows 7 from scratch (i.e., pop the disc in and boot from it, as opposed to using the Boot Camp Assistant from Mac OS X), but you'll certainly want to use the Mac OS X disc afterwards to install the Boot Camp hardware drivers.
Windows 7 Pro, x64 disc boots fine on Mac Pro. Just delete all existing Mac partition, and create new Windows partitions, and reformat the new partitions. Windows 7 installs and boots as is. Then insert Snow Leopard disc and install Boot Camp drivers.
d3342ee215