Imac 2012 Install Windows 10

[Jonathan Garcia]

Ive been trying to find a way around to get Windows 10 on this unsupported Mac and everything has been going well until now, when I've just been about to install the windows. Does anyone have clear steps on how to get onwards from this situation other than buying a new device? Been trying to find answers for the past 2 days, I'm really frustrated..

W10 is officially not supported on a 2011 or older Mac. However, if you must run W10, you can install W7/W8.1 using a physical DVD and the built-in Optical drive, and then upgrade to W10, which allows you hardware to work properly. W8.1 is preferred, since you can install it without activation and without a product key, till you upgrade with W10 and activate it using a valid License and Product Key.

Do you know what the ''BOOTCAMP'' partition should be as of format? MS-DOS or exFat or Mac OS X journaled (extended)? There's so many options and I'm so tired of looking for guides which all tell me a different story.

i've used bc, but i have an iMac mid 2011 i7 quad core, when I try to install windows 7 64 bit on it, with every mode, BC, manually creating a ntcfs partition, on utility disc, and than restart, it does't work and i can't install Windows 7 64bit

I also have tried it, but i fail. I've played 3 lp and I've also installed some Au for Logic Pro X, but it won't install windows 7 64 bit at all, I've also tried with an 32bit version of it, and it start to install.

Hi I've tried a lot of time but without successe. every time that i put the dvd with windows 10 or Windows 7 in to the dvd drive and start boot camp assistant, the process will fail, but if i create with utility disk a partition in ExFat and then reboot the iMac and when i turn on the Mac and press the option button, start the process there it tells me this. I desperately need the windows 64 bit on this machine.

2. On a 2011 Mac, the W7 installation needs a Hybrid MBR to install Windows, it will not install correctly on a GPT-only disk. If you use EFI boot from the DVD, it installs Windows, but some of your devices (GPU and Audio) may not work.

If you don't want to have a separate OS, Parallels Desktop for Mac puts a virtual window on your Mac Desktop with Windows. A free alternative is VirtualBox although requires more computer knowledge.

To help your issue without using Parallels, try using a USB drive.

If you did not create the disk with the ISO using a direct byte for byte copy, it won't work. I do not know how to do that on Windows, but I'm sure there's a way, but on Linux or Mac OS it is easy, run this in a shell:

where PATH_TO_ISO is the path to the ISO file, and DISK_PATH is the path to the disk. Be sure to use the right disk path, or VERY bad things can happen, you can rewrite your hard drive. To find the disk path on Mac OS, take out all USBs and disks, then run

again. A new disk should appear. Use its path (ex: /dev/disk2) as DISK_PATH in the dd command. Never use /dev/disk0 or /dev/disk1, that is your HDD or SSD.Try it again using the disk created by the dd command. The command takes a long time to run, but you can check its progress by pressing ctrl+t. If this does not work, you could try installing rEFInd boot manager, which may aid you in booting from the partition bootcamp creates, but will not allow you to boot windows without a hybrid MBR (bootcamps way of allowing windows, which only accepts MBR partitions, to boot on Mac disks, which are often GPT partition schemes). There is a possibility to format an external drive (USB or HDD) to MBR partition scheme (you can even use DiskUtility for this), and install windows on it using the previous dd command. I have no idea if this would work, so do more research on it, but dd is how you would install Linux from an ISO to an external drive, so it may be similar.

When I installed windows 10 on the mac I simply created a windows 10 boot thumb drive and booted from that after I installed the SSD. I then let windows partition the disk and install as normal. it worked fine but I decided to go back to OSX as I did not have a license for windows and did not want to purchase one. besides I like OSX just as much as windows. I find it more stable by a long shot.

I'm running into a frustrating issue where I need to create a Windows 10 bootable USB for my Macbook Pro 2023, but every attempt to use Boot Camp Assistant has ended in errors. This has left me in a bit of a bind, as I'm keen to find an alternative method that bypasses Boot Camp altogether. The goal is to successfully prepare a USB drive with Windows 10 installation files, which I plan to use on a PC. If anyone knows how to do this directly on macOS, avoiding Boot Camp issues, I'd really appreciate a simplified guide or tool suggestions to get this done.

There are many ways and tools can be used to make Windows 10 bootable USB installer on Mac, like rufus, WonderISO or Unetbootin. But for me, I used to installed windows 10 in a VM (vmware i think is what I used) on Mac and then created the USB drive from there. I wish that you had known about this method.

Bootcamp assistant app is removed from Apple Silicon on Mac so you can't create Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac with Bootcamp app. I am using WonderISO on my Apple Silicon Mac running the latest macOS Sonoma and it only takes 3 clicks to create a Windows 10 bootable USB on my Mac.

Parallels Desktop, a popular virtualization software for Mac, allows you to run Windows and other operating systems within macOS without needing to reboot. So you can create Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac in a Windows virtual machine.

Firstly, you need to have a copy of the Windows 10 ISO file. Microsoft provides this file for free on their website, intended for users who need to install or reinstall Windows. Download this file to your Mac before proceeding to the next steps.

With the Windows 10 ISO file downloaded, the next crucial step is to obtain a USB drive with sufficient storage space. Typically, a drive with at least 8GB of space is recommended. This ensures that there is enough room for the Windows installation files and any additional updates or drivers you might need to include in the bootable media.

Once Parallels Desktop is installed, you can use it to create a new virtual machine using the Windows 10 ISO file. During the setup process, Parallels will ask where you want to install Windows. At this stage, instead of installing it on a virtual disk, you'll choose your USB drive as the installation destination. This process effectively turns your USB drive into bootable Windows 10 installation media.

However, it's important to note that directly creating Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac through Parallels Desktop might not be as straightforward as using dedicated software for making bootable drives. It takes more time and storage space on your Mac.

If you want to create windows 10 bootable USB on Mac without bootcamp, you can try using a different tool called Etcher. Etcher is a free and open-source tool that allows you to create bootable USB drives from ISO files. Here are the steps to create a Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac using Etcher:

It becomes much challenging to create Windows 10 bootable USB on Mac as Bootcamp is not available on Apple Silicon Mac. Instead, you can borrow another Intel Mac and use Bootcamp to make a bootable Windows 10 USB on Mac.

Step 1: Open the Boot Camp Assistant in the Utilities folder within your Applications folder. Alternatively, use Spotlight search (Cmd + Space) and type "Boot Camp Assistant" to find and open it.

I found a way to install Windows on system without Mac OS system. You will need a USB with a Mac OS system on it. Reason why you will need to format the HD of the mac. With the system off. Turn on the mac. Access the boot up Options menu. Select the USB with the mac os. You will not be loading the Mac Os system. Don't worry. It will load to install the Mac OS system. You click the desktop and select Disk Utility. Choose the hard drive. Select Partition. Select one Partition. Under the Partition window Select Master Boot Record. This will allow you to format the hard drive that is not GUID partition that is for Mac. Once that is done. You are golden. Make sure you have a bootable USB with Windows on it. I used a bootable CD with Windows 7. When selecting the bootable media, it will load windows. You may receive error that unable to use the hard drive. No worries. Select the hard drive, delete and format. and Try again. This should allow you use the hard drive and install windows. No boot camp and no Mac OS on the system. If you need to get drivers. Try using IOBIT Driver Booster. It is free. Or you can view the devices in Device manager to locate the kind of devices that maybe needed to be updated.

@Delaney_Justin Tried this today. My commands seemed to have worked. Files were created on my USB Flash Drive, but still doesn't seem to be recognized by my new PC. Do you have ideas on how to verify that the correct files were created? Maybe I messed up the path part?

@Tonyhu2255

I got me a hand me down iMac 27" late 2015 from work and just used Ventoy to boot into HirenBootcd. From this Windows recovery environment I started an installation for W11 with the bypass method for the requirement check. I had to manually look up all the drivers and the only one that gave me trouble was the audio which I managed to fix after tons of possible options on the sound driver end.

So now I don't use bootcamp and can install all the regular Windows drivers for the hardware. It runs like a charm and I'm surprised as to how capable of a machine it is this way. It runs some emulators and games pretty good as well.

o, for the M1 chip, Boot Camp should work just fine without any additional software like Parallels. However, if you have an older model with an Intel processor (M2/M3), then using Parallels is necessary in order to run Windows alongside macOS seamlessly on your machine. As for obtaining genuine Windows keys from Microsoft Partner Hypest-key

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