Dual Boot Without Bootcamp

Installing Windows on a Mac should be a piece of cake with Bootcamp, but thatrarely is the case. In fact, I would personally say that Boot Camp Assistantis one of the worst apps that comes with OS X and unlike the rest, it doesn’twork seamlessly.

A few of its drawbacks:

Big Sur is the official codename of Apple's latest macOS operating system and now it is publicly available. If you have upgraded to macOS Big Sure as a registered software developer for Apple, you can install Windows 10 on macOS Big Sur with the stock Boot Camp (A.K.A. Boot Camp Assistant) app. Assuming you are familiar with dual-boot on a Mac, the process should be quite simple to follow. Both of the boot managers available to use can handle the dual-booting process; they can even handle more than two OSes, but the Mac's boot manager won’t recognize the Ubuntu OS without a bit of fiddling, and the GRUB boot manager isn't particularly easy to use.

• It only supports a drive with a single partition.
• It often throws very obscure error messages with limited detail.
• It re-downloads 1.6 GB Windows drivers every single time it runs. These areplaced under /Library/Application Support/BootCamp/WindowsSupport.dmg anddeleted and re-downloaded each time Boot Camp Assistant starts processing.

This post did take a lot of work to complie and I did bone my hard drive afew times while trying certain ideas, so please throw out a thanks if ithelped you out :)

Disclaimer: This guide below contains procedures which can potentiallydestroy your partitions and data. I accept no responsibility for such loss soplease proceed at your own risk.

Update (2016-07-20): I have updated this post with further improvementsrelating to downloading of Boot Camp drivers and ensuring that a Hybrid MBR isnot used (which would cause issues when installing Windows).

What You Will Need

• An 8 GB or larger USB stick
• A copy of the Windows 10 ISO
• A valid Windows 10 license
• A downloaded copy of unetbootin

Downloading Boot Camp Drivers

1. Start Boot Camp Assistant
2. Select Action / Download Windows Support Software
3. Choose your Downloads directory, enter your password and then clickSave

This will be the only step that we will use Boot Camp Assistant for.

Creating a Bootable USB Windows 10 Installer

Formatting Your USB Stick

Attach your USB stick and start Disk Utility, select your USB drive in theleft panel under External, click Erase and set the options as follows(exactly) and click Erase:

Name: FAT32
Format: MS-DOS (FAT)
Scheme: Master Boot Record

Turning Your USB Stick into a Windows Installer

Open unetbootin, enter your password, set the options as follows andclick OK:

Diskimage: checked, set to ISO and browse to your Windows 10 ISO
Type: USB Drive
Drive: Your USB drive (you should only see one entry here)

If you see more than one drive listed, you may confirm which is your USB driveby opening the Terminal and typing:

You’ll see your USB drive in the output and it should look something like this:

Once you have kicked off unetbootin, grab a snack while the Windows ISO iscopied to the USB stick. This process takes around 15 minutes to complete.

Finishing Up

When this has completed, you may right click on the USB stick in Finder,select Rename “FAT32” and rename it as you like (I’ll call mine“WINDOWS 10”).

Finally, copy the WindowsSupport in your Downloads directory tothe Windows 10 USB stick so it’s easy to get to after our installation.

Partitioning Your Drive

In Disk Utility, select your internal hard drive on the left panel, andclick on Partition.

Click the + button and create a new partition of your desired size for yourWindows installation and name it as you wish (I’ll call mine “BOOTCAMP”). Ensure that the Format is set to MS-DOS (FAT) and click on Apply.

Ensuring that a Hybrid MBR is not used

Huge thanks to Rod’s post from the superuser post titledWindows detects GPT disk as MBR in EFI boot.

Once you add a FAT32 partition with either Boot Camp Assistant or Disk Utility,your disk is converted into a hybrid GPT / MBR disk which is actually notsupported by newer versions of Windows. In this step, we revert thisadditional change made by Disk Utility by switching back to a pure GPTpartition table.

1. Dowload the latest version ofGPT fdiskby browsing to the version, then gdisk-binaries and clicking the filewith the *.pkg extension (e.g. gdisk-1.0.1.pkg).

2. Install GPT fdisk by running the installer you downloaded

3. Open a Terminal and check the state of your MBR

   If your MBR partition is set to hybrid, please continue with step 4,otherwise if it is set to protective, you may skip the rest of thissection. Simply type q and hit return to exit GPT fdisk.

4. Type p to view the existing partition table and verify you’re workingon the correct disk

5. Type x to enter the expert menu

6. Type n to create a fresh protective MBR

7. Type w to save your changes and confirm the change when asked

8. Type q to exit GPT fdisk

9. Run GPT fdisk to show your disk layout:

   Your partition table should look something like this:

Installing Windows

Disconnecting All Devices From USB Ports

This step is critical as I have had rather serious problems during Windowsinstallation when certain external drives are connected.

Unplug everything from your Mac except your keyboard (if wired) and yourbootable Windows USB stick (which we prepared earlier).

If your Mac contains multiple physical drives, you will need to disconnectall disks except the one which you intend to install Windows on or you mayencounter the following error:

Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation. To install Windows, restart the installation.

Booting From the USB Stick

Ensure that the USB stick containing the Windows installer is inserted andthen restart your Mac while holding down the option (alt) key.

You should now be presented with a list of bootable drives. Select the USBdrive (usually titled “EFI Boot”) to begin installing Windows.

Correcting Your Windows Hard Disk Partition

When you are asked Where do you want to install Windows?, select theWindows partition created earlier (which I called “BOOTCAMP”) and clickDelete.

Next, select the chunk of Unallocated Space and click on New to createa proper Windows NTFS partition.

Note: OS X only supports creation of FAT filesystems, so this is why we needto re-create the partition ourselves during install.

Completing the Installation

Allow the installer to complete and boot into Windows.

Installing Boot Camp Support Software

Once Windows is up and running, install the Boot Camp Support software runningWindowsSupport/BootCamp/Setup.exe on your USB stick.

Note: The installer takes a little while to show up, so please be patient.

You may encounter a known issue whereby the Boot Camp Support Softwareinstaller locks up while installing Realtek audio.

If this occurs, you will need to open Task Manager and kill theRealtekSetup.exe process.

After the installer has completed, answer No when prompted to rebootand install the Realtek drivers manually by running%USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalTempRarSFX0BootCampDriversRealTekRealtekSetup.exe.If you can’t find this file, check any other directories starting withRARSFX under %USERPROFILE%AppDataLocalTemp.

Once complete, reboot Windows.

What You Will Need to Configure Windows

• The latest version of SharpKeys
• The flipflop-windows-sheel binary (see README for a download link)

Configuring Windows

Mapping Your Mac Keyboard

Install and run SharpKeys and then configure the following mappings tocorrect your Mac keyboard so that it behaves like a regular Windows keyboard:

Function: F13 -> Special: PrtSc
Special: Left Alt => Special: Left Windows
Special: Left Windows => Special: Left Alt
Special: Right Alt => Special: Right Windows
Special: Right Windows => Special: Right Alt

Note: for F13, you’ll need to select Press a key and click F13 on yourkeyboard.

Switching to Natural Scrolling

If you wish to flip scrolling direction to match that on OS X, runFlipWheel.exe and then click on Flip All.

Enabling Num Lock on Boot

Paste the following into a file named Enable NumLock on Boot.reg thenimport this into the registry to enable NumLock when Windows boots up(it doesn’t by default).

Completing Configuration

That’s it, give your machine one last reboot and you’ll have a fully workingWindows 10 installation.

Note: I have found Apple’s Magic Mouse to be extremely unreliable usingthe Boot Camp drivers from Apple. As such, I recommend purchasing a Logitech(or similar) mouse for use in Windows. I have no trouble plugging thewireless receiver for my Logitech mouse into one of the USB ports of my wiredApple Keyboard and it’s so tiny that you can’t see it at all.

Cleaning up a Windows Installation

Removing the Windows Partitions

If you decide to remove Windows, you may find that Disk Utility doesn’t allowyou to delete the two partitions that have been created by the Windowsinstaller.

This happens due to the fact that the first small partition created is of atype called Microsoft Reserved which OS X’s Disk Utility doesn’t support.

The safest way to delete these partitions is through the Windows installer. Sosimply boot from your USB stick as we did before and when you reach theWhere do you want to install Windows? question, you may delete your“BOOTCAMP” partition and the small 16 MB partition of type MSR (Reserved)just above the BOOTCAMP partition.

Once done, simply quit the installer by clicking the X in the top right cornerof each Window and reboot back into OS X.

Removing the Boot Entry

Even though we have removed the Windows partition, a boot entry will still bepresent when holding down option (alt) during boot.

You may remove these items by running the following in your Terminal:

Contents

• 3.3 Dual Boot Windows 10 on Mac OS X 10.11

Not only has Apple been diligently working on a new OS, El Capitan, but Microsoft isn’t too far behind, either. In fact, their newest version of Windows is, in my humble opinion (although there are a lot of people who agree with me), the best one they’ve ever released. Many of us were unhappy with how Windows 8 looked, but the creators rectified that mistake by combining the familiarity of Windows 7 with the productivity of its successor.

Another great thing about this new OS is that is not solely available to Microsoft users, but Apple users can enjoy it, as well. Now, as a Mac user, you probably don’t want to part with your iOS, especially since you’ve gone through all that trouble of downloading El Capitan while it’s still in beta. What you can do is dual boot them, so you’ll get the best of both worlds. If you don’t really know how to go about this, I will walk you through the process.

Detailed Guide to Twin Boot Windows 10 on Mac OS X El Capitan

You don’t have to install Mac OS X El Capitan on your Mac device, you can also install it on an external hard drive, most especially when you want to access the OS quickly. You can consider Thunderbolt drives which are similar to the internal drives on Mac, or you can simply use the USB 3.0 external drive if you don’t have the Thunderbolt on your Mac. You will have to format an external drive before installing Mac OS X El Capitan, this will help to install the Mac OS X El Capitan safely on the hard drive and at the same time the configuration of your device will not be changed.

Obviously, you need an Internet connection, but I don’t want to be Captain Obvious here. So, go to their download page and sign up for the Insider Program. Once you’re signed in, scroll down and you’ll see two ISO files: x64 or x86. Depending on your OS, choose the one you need. If you’re not sure, x64 is for 64-bit OS, while x86 is for 32-bit. Not that x64 can install both version, but it’s still recommended to use the one that is more suitable.

For this step, you’ll need Boot Camp Assistant. Open it up and check the options that say “Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk” and “Download the latest Windows support software for Apple,” then click 'Continue'. Now insert a USB drive into your computer (it has to have at least 16GB) and move the Windows ISO file to it. Boot camp will then ask you to confirm it, since the flash drive will be converted to FAT and everything on it will be deleted, so click 'Continue'. The file will start copying and will be renamed to WININSTALL. It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes and, once it is done, you can move on to the next step.

What will make this process easier is that you’ll be able to use Boot Camp Assistant for it, as well. Instead of checking the same boxes you did last time, select the one that says 'Install Windows 7 or later version' and go to 'Continue'.

Next, you’ll be asked to choose the size of your partition. You can go with any size that you want, but it’s recommended to have at least 30GB if you’re trying to install Windows 10 for the first time, or 40GB if you’re just updating it. It’s better to choose a little more extra space, just in case. Once you do that, click on 'Install'. When the installation has finished, your Mac will automatically restart.

Dual Boot Without Bootcamp Mac

Next, you’ll see the logo of Windows. Choose the language you want the OS to use and hit 'Install'. You’ll see two types of installation: the Upgrade and the Custom one. Choose the custom one and the partition you’ve created earlier. When you're done with that, click on 'Format' and then, 'Next'. Then you just wait until Windows finishes the rest on its own.

Dual Boot Without Bootcamp Download

You’ll be asked to create an account and set up a pin, just like you would if you were installing it on a Windows computer. The only new thing with Windows 10 is that there’s now a pin, not a password, but it’s pretty similar, so you shouldn’t have any trouble with it.

From that point forward, you can normally use your new Windows 10. In case you want to switch between the two systems, you just need to turn off your computer and hold the Alt key when it’s booting again. It will open the 'Start Manager' where you can choose to use either Windows or Apple.

Dual Boot Mac Windows 7 Without Bootcamp

If at any point you decide that you don’t want to have Windows 10 on your Mac, you can simply delete it. What you do is you go to 'Disk Utility', select the file that should be called Macintosh HD and click on 'Partition'. Then, choose the smaller one on the bottom that is untitled and click the minus (-) sign. Click on 'Remove' and voila – Windows 10 will be deleted, alongside anything you had stored on it.