Welcome to Boot Camp... Hope You Survive
This post describes the steps I went through to go from a Mac Mini running macOS 10.15 Catalina and Windows 10 Home (64 bit) to running macOS 10.13 High Sierra and Windows 10 Home. This took 9 days of elapsed time (and additional time to reinstall my Windows apps and apply Windows updates) and would not have even been necessary if Apple allowed memory upgrades for my Mac Mini.
Note: MacOSX (also MacOS X, Mac OS X, MacOS 10, Mac OS 10, “mac OS” and “macOS”) is the Unix based Macintosh Operating System.
What Did I Learn?
- Catalina is another OS in which Apple made decisions to manipulate the hard drive without user consent. This makes it difficult to recover from.
- Time Machine recovery is highly unreliable.
- Migration Assistant requires far more available room on a hard drive than the volume of the files it is recovering.
- 64 bit Macs must install Windows 10 64 bit, not 32 bit.
- FAT32 has a file size limit of 4 GB which is a problem for Windows 10 installation. [see https://www.uubyte.com/boot-camp-not-enough-space-usb.html]
- High Sierra Boot Camp Assistant has a nasty bug that prevents resizing partitions. [see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8263514]
- If you encounter problems with the download of the Apple drivers you can use the non-Apple utility Brigadier instead. Download from github at github.com/timsutton/brigadier .
- VERY IMPORTANT: Unplug any external drives (like the one you use for Time Machine) before trying to install Windows from a USB drive. The Windows installer gets confused by multiple USB drives.
- If reinstalling an activated version of Windows check accounts.microsoft.com to confirm the Windows version to install.
- This was far harder than it should have been.
The Initial Problem
Problem: Performance of macOS 10.15 Catalina on my Mac mini was incredibly bad, probably due to the Mini having only 8 GB RAM. Unfortunately I found to my surprise that unlike older Mac Mini’s this Mac Mini's memory is soldered to the motherboard when you order it from Apple, making it impossible to upgrade.
I decided to try to roll back to macOS 10.13 High Sierra from Time Machine. This should not interfere with my working Boot Camp Windows 10 installation, or so I thought.
Problem: The Time Machine backups I had for High Sierra would not work for recovery. Multiple attempts just resulted in failure.
Compromise Solution: Wipe the Mac OS partition on the internal hard drive and clean install High Sierra. Then recover the files from Time Machine using Migration Assistant.
Problem: After wiping and installing High Sierra the Migration Assistant insisted that there wasn’t enough room to recover my files. Turns out that Migration Assistant wants working space on the target that significantly exceeds the actual volume of the files to be recovered.
Compromise Solution: Delete my Windows 10 partition to free up space and complete Migration Assistant. Plan to reinstall Windows using Boot Camp Assistant after files have been recovered. Deleting the Windows partition did allow enough space for Migration Assistant to complete.
Reinstalling Windows 10 (64 bit)
Problem: High Sierra Boot Camp Assistant will not allow me to size the Boot Camp partition and insists on installing Windows 7. [see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8263514]
Compromise Solution: Install Windows 7 on a 48 GB partition and use an external drive for PC storage.
Problem: BootCamp will not automatically download the Apple drivers for Windows 7 any longer, so you have to use an alternative website.
Proposed Solution: Use my Windows 7 ISO to create the USB, then download the drivers manually and copy them to the USB, then continue with Boot Camp.
Problem: After all that Boot Camp claimed the USB was unusable and could not be booted from.
Plan: Give up on High Sierra. Use Time Machine to recover macOS 10.14 Mojave and use Boot Camp to install Windows 10. Plan to use Time Machine afterward to recover High Sierra, leaving Windows 10 intact.
Day 2
Problem: After recovery of Mojave, BootCamp says it is unable to create Windows Install USB on 16GB USB drive because not enough space. I do not have any working 32GB USB drives.
Solution: Purchase new 32GB USB drives (k’ching!) and wait 2 days for delivery. (A waste of both money and time since this should not have been necessary, see below.)
Day 4
Problem Unfortunately even using a 32GB drive, Boot Camp says there is not enough space. Turns out this error is due to Windows files exceeding 4 GB and Boot Camp formatting the USB as FAT32 and then giving an erroneous error message.) [see https://www.uubyte.com/boot-camp-not-enough-space-usb.html]
Solution: Format the USB as ExFAT using Disk Utility. Then open the Windows 10 ISO manually and copy the files to it. Then continue with Boot Camp.
Problem: Boot Camp will not allow the software drivers to be downloaded to the ExFAT formatted USB
Solution: Format a second USB FAT32 and use it to download the drivers
Problem: Download of the software drivers gets stuck half way and does not complete. Reboots, Disk Repair, etc. not effective at resolving the issue. [see https://www.reddit.com/r/bootcamp/comments/bkpn2u/windows_support_software_could_not_be_saved_to/]
Solution: Download Brigadier from github.com/timsutton/brigadier and execute from Terminal to manually download the drivers. This creates a mountable .dmg that contains the Windows drivers for the Mac model it is run on. Mount and copy those contents onto the ExFAT USB and then reinitiate Boot Camp at the installation step.
Problem: Boot Camp allows the Boot Camp partition to be sized and created and then reboots the computer into Windows 10 and then says that the Boot Camp partition cannot be used to install Windows 10 because it must be formatted for NTFS. Choosing the Format option reformats the partition in in NTFS and changes its name to UNTITLED but later attempts to use it results in the error "We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one." No option but to quit the Windows installer which reboots the computer back to macOS Mojave. [see https://www.reddit.com/r/bootcamp/comments/3t7yai/we_couldnt_create_a_new_partition_or_locate_an/]
(Note that the cause of this may possibly be that I had a USB external drive connected at the time. See #8 in the What Did I Learn section above.)
Solution: Use Boot Camp Assistant to delete the new partition, then reboot with option-command-p-r to reset the PRAM, and try the third step of Boot Camp Assistant again. Same problem.
Day 5
Give up on Mojave. Reboot with command-R and restore from Time Machine a version of Catalina 10.15 hoping I can get Boot Camp to install Windows 10 and then restore the Mac partition from High Sierra. Unfortunately each restore attempt takes 6-8 hours and they often end with an error.
After 5 failed restore attempts over 2 days in which each attempt failed with less than 20 minutes to completion, I gave up on restoring Catalina and decided to do a fresh install and then try to set up Boot Camp and then recover High Sierra from Time Machine. The Catalina install warned me that a Time Machine file in the root of the hard drive would be destroyed if I proceeded with the Catalina install. Like I have a choice. Hopefully this will not bite me in the butt later. (It did not.)
Day 8
While I was eventually able to install Catalina, I was unable to use Boot Camp Assistant to then install Windows. The Windows 10 installer insisted that the BOOTCAMP partition created by the Assistant (partition 3 on the disk) could not be used to install Windows. Using the Format option did not resolve this problem. (Note that the cause of this may possibly be that I had a USB external drive connected at the time. See #8 in the What Did I Learn section above.)
Decided to give up on everything newer than the Mac mini and restore to original factory settings and its original OS version which was MacOSX 10.11 El Capitan. This Mac mini has no DVD drive and Apple provides no DVD recovery disks, so to initiate original OS recovery you hold down shift-option-command-R during restart and it will put up a message that it is restoring from the internet. After a while it launches the Restore utility but the “Restore OS X” option should theoretically reinstall the original OS shipped with the Mac. To be extra sure, before taking the reinstall option I went into Disk Utility and erased the internal drive.
I then connected to my WiFi network and began the restore. A dialog pops up that my computer’s eligibility will be verified with Apple to which I responded “Continue”. Then I agreed to the SLA (twice) and directed it to install on my now “Untitled” 1 TB internal drive. It estimated 45 minutes. My new plan after the restore is to try to upgrade to MacOSX 10.12 and then use its Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows 10 from the USB drive I had created earlier.
Approximately an hour later the restoration of 10.11.6 completed successfully.
I then copied the Mac OS 10.12 installer “Install macOS Sierra” to the Applications folder. The macOS installers can give the error “application can’t be verified” and fail unless you first change the system date to a time closer to their release. This is done in Terminal by using the command: sudo date. The date command takes as a parameter the date and time in format MMDDHHmmYY where the YY should be greater than 15.
In this case I used:
sudo date 0101010116
I then quit Terminal and launched the Install macOS Sierra application. After about 45 minutes it completed successfully.
The Sierra Boot Camp Installer wants to install Windows 10 and had no issues partitioning the disk in less than a minute and then it correctly rebooted itself for the Windows 10 install from my USB drive. (Fingers crossed.)
Windows Setup now shows 4 partitions on my internal drive 0: 181 MB labeled EFI, 743 GB, 619 MB, and 187 GB labeled BOOTCAMP. It warns me that Windows cannot be installed on partition 4. After Format it still cannot install it. (Note that the cause of this may possibly be that I had a USB external drive connected at the time. See #8 in the What Did I Learn section above.)
Reboot. Use Disk Utility to remove the partition “—“. Reboot zapping PRAM. Try Boot Camp Assistant again. No dice. Same failure. (Note that the cause of this may possibly be that I had a USB external drive connected at the time. See #8 in the What Did I Learn section above.)
Maybe there are updates for Sierra to apply. Reboot. Use Disk Utility to delete the NTFS partition. Turn on WiFi and check for updates in the App Store. Try to download and apply macOS Sierra update 10.12.6. Unfortunately the thermometer bar under the update says “NaN GB of 0 bytes” and is not moving. Force quit and reboot. Go into App Store and try again. This time it works. Must be my lucky day. It estimates 4 minutes to download the 1.97 GB update. Then it automatically restarts and 20 minutes later the installation of 10.12.6 completes.
Login and initiate Boot Camp Assistant. Oddly it now wants to install Windows 7 rather than Windows 10. Unchecked steps 1 and 2 and proceeded with partitioning and installing Windows 10. Partitioning completed without issue and the computer restarted into the Windows 10 installer. Same problem. After format Windows gives the message “We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one.” (Note that the cause of this may possibly be that I had a USB external drive connected at the time. See #8 in the What Did I Learn section above.)
Google searching for the error message I found a suggestion on windowsreport.com that the Windows installer can become confused when external USB drives are connected:
If you’re planning to install Windows 10 from a USB flash drive you might encounter We couldn’t create a new partition error message if more than one USB drive is connected to your PC.In order to avoid this problem, we strongly advise that you disconnect any additional USB drives and leave only your Windows 10 USB flash drive connected.
So I unplugged my external USB drive I use for Time Machine and rebooted holding down the option key and then selecting the EFI Boot which is the Windows USB thumb drive. At this point the BOOTCAMP partition already exists and is formatted in NTFS and named “Untitled”.
In the Windows installer the untitled NTFS partition I had created for Boot Camp is selectable so I select it and hit Next to begin the Windows installation. Hopefully I can rename it to BOOTCAMP at some point later. (Turned out this happened without any intervention on my part.)
During the install I did not allow it to connect to the internet as I did not want any Windows updates to start to be applied. Once I reached the Windows desktop the Bootcamp installer started up automatically and began installing the Apple packages and drivers. After finishing it required a restart which I complied with and it rebooted into Windows 10 successfully. After logging in the Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSAT.exe) automatically initiated. I waited for it to complete and then ejected and physically pulled out the USB thumb drive. Interestingly the Windows partition is now named BOOTCAMP.
I then did Shut Down. Plugged my Time Machine drive back in and started up. The computer started in Windows so I restarted again with the option key down and selected my Mac HD to boot off of.
Recovering High Sierra from Time Machine
I then rebooted holding down command-R to start the Time Machine recovery process. I selected my external drive that I use for Time Machine and then selected my most recent 10.13.6 backup for restore. The restore process began and estimated 6 hours for completion. Time to make a sandwich.
The restore completed successfully after about 4 hours. My initial account was restored and I was able to login to High Sierra with it.
Post High Sierra Restore
After a restore you have to go into the Photos app and repair the library to regain access to your photos. This can take several minutes depending on the size of your Photo library. I don’t know why this is necessary, but it is. Fortunately the same is not true of iTunes.
Day 9
Restoring and Activating Windows 10
When I went to activate my Windows installation I found that I had installed the incorrect version. I had installed Windows Pro rather than Windows Home, as so I could not activate. I should have logged into accounts.microsoft.com and checked for my activations ahead of time. As a result I needed to reinstall Windows.
This theoretically is not a disaster though because the USB thumb drive is not Windows 10 edition specific and so there is no need to set up a new USB drive or re-download the Apple drivers. (Note that the Apple drivers are machine specific, so you cannot use the same USB thumb drive on different computer versions.)
So I unplugged my external USB drive, inserted the USB thumb drive and rebooted holding down option and then selecting the EFI Boot to boot into the Windows installer.
When you install Windows over an existing version of Windows the installer copies the old Windows files (including all installed apps) into an “Windows.old” folder rather than deleting them. Fortunately I had enough space on the BOOTCAMP partition to handle this.
The installer allowed me to select Windows Home edition and my BOOTCAMP partition for the installation.
The installer then rebooted and came up with a screen asking which version of Windows I wanted to use. Unfortunately the screen was displayed for only a split second and then inexplicably went blank. I clicked the mouse hoping that the default is the version of Windows I just installed and the screen turned back on and said it was setting up devices but there was no way to determine which version (Home or Pro) was being set up. (Checking later it did fortunately default to Windows Home.)
When the Windows desktop came up the Boot Camp installer started up and installed the packages and device drivers and then it rebooted itself into Windows again. After my login the Windows System Assessment Tool automatically ran, taking a few minutes to complete. I then ejected the USB thumb drive, connected to my WIFi network, and Windows automatically recognized that Windows Home was an activated version. I then deleted the Windows.old folder in order to free up about 50 GB and began reinstalling my Windows applications.
I really hope I do not find myself having to do this again.
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