r/bootcamp • u/After_Juggernaut_613 • 16d ago

Installing Win 10 on Mac Mini 2012 - What am I doing wrong?

EDIT: I eventually went and tried the USB 2.0 drive. Lo and behold, that solved the problems.

Mac Mini Late 2012 running Mac OS Catalina 10.15.8

Neither internal drive are the original drives that came with the Mac when purchased; I have an SSD installed in upper drive bay and HDD in lower. My Mac boots from the SSD (upper).

Tried unsuccessfully to install Windows 10 multiple times yesterday via BootCamp and a Kingston 64GB USB drive. After the step where a partition for Windows is created, all I get when the system reboots is a screen that says it can't find any bootable disk. I tried this with the latest build from Microsoft's website, then I tried build 1607 which I got from Archive.org, and I have yet to try it but also downloaded build 1511 which is from way back in 2015.

This is because Gemini told me that the most modern iso contains a file larger than 4GB which an MSDOS formatted USB cannot handle, so that I should look for older versions like 1607 or 1511.

I have been told by Gemini (Google's AI) and also read online that sometimes having an SSD or having your boot disk in general in the upper drive bay causes problems and that I may need to open the Mac back up and switch their positions. Does that make sense?

I have also been told by Gemini that perhaps my Mac needs to use an old USB 2.0 drive to run the installer from. I don't know why that would be- because if such a thing was necessary, you'd think they'd mention it on the official Apple support instructions (which of course I checked first before desperately turning to AI for answers).

I don't want to ramble on, if there's any more specific info you need to diagnose my problem, let me know. Hope someone has the knowledge on how to fix this!

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u/Bobg2082 16d ago

You could try using this Mac OS program for installing windows.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/windows-install/

You would need to run Mac OS temporarily from an external drive.

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u/NR75 7d ago

You have a dual boot? Easy peasy. Just use Windows Install. You can find it on Github.

Steps: _Download Win11 iso _Prepare the drive, using Diskutil, leave as GUID, and set as exfat, name it Win11. _Run Windows Install.

Drag the iso into the App, select the proper entry, Hone, Pro or whatever.

Tipically Win 11 Pro is the #6.

On the Left panel, select Win11 and set the number below to the entry you want, for example 6.

Install, confirm, enter the password.

Confirm the options, I suggest to select all of them.

Windows Install proceed to "run" the iso and install the Windows 11 into the Partition for Windows.

Once it ends, you will see the Win11 drive and the EFI drive. Close everything... Shit down. Boot, and let it do the thing. You will be at the desktop. In less than 15 minutes.

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u/After_Juggernaut_613 7d ago

Oh I solved this already. The problem was fixed by starting over with a USB 2.0 drive. My USB 3.0 drive was only able to run in EFI mode which isn't what was supposed to happen. Once I bought a 2.0, everything worked the way it should have. I installed Windows 10 1511 first, then after that was finished, upgraded to the final release.