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Boot Camp is a free utility which allows you to install Windows 11 on Intel Macs for free. Here we show you how to install Windows 11 on a Mac for free using Boot Camp.
Firstly it’s important to be aware that Boot Camp is definitely not the best way to run Windows on a Mac anymore in 2023.
There are various ways to run Windows on a Mac but by far the best way to run Windows 11 on a Mac is using a virtual machine.
Virtual machines allow you to run macOS and Windows simultaneously whereas Boot Camp can only run one operating system at a time.
The best virtual machine for Mac is Parallels which even automatically downloads and installs Windows 11 from Microsoft for you.
Boot Camp also does not work on Apple Silicon Macs with the M1, M2 or M3 chip either.
Virtual machines however work on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs too making them the best way to run Windows 11 on Apple Silicon Macs too.
Quick Navigation
- Can You Install Windows 11 On M1, M2 or M3 Macs Using Boot Camp?
- Can You Install Windows 11 On A Touch Bar Mac?
- How To Install Windows 11 On a Mac With Boot Camp
Can You Install Windows 11 On M1, M2 or M3 Macs Using Boot Camp?
You cannot install Windows 11 on Apple Silicon Macs using Boot Camp.
However, there are other ways to install Windows 11 on M-chip Macs.
If you have any of the following Apple Silicon Macs, you cannot install Windows 11 on your Mac with Boot Camp:
- MacBook Air (M1, M2 2020, 2022)
- MacBook Pro (M1, M2, M3 2020, 2022, 2023)
- Mac Mini (M1, M2, 2020, 2022)
- iMac (M1, M3 2021, 2023)
- Mac Studio (M1, M2, 2021, 2023)
If you’re not sure whether you have an Intel chip or M-chip Mac simply go to the Apple logo in the top left of your screen and select About this Mac and you will see both the Chip and version of macOS you are using.
Boot Camp is only available on macOS on Intel Macs including those running Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura and Sonoma.
Can You Install Windows 11 On A Touch Bar Mac?
Unfortunately, you can’t install Windows 11 on a Mac using Boot Camp as there is no F10 key on a Touch Bar Mac which is required during the installation process.
However, the easiest way to install Windows 11 on a Touch Bar Mac is to install Windows 10 using Boot Camp and then upgrade to Windows 11 from Windows 10.
How To Install Windows 11 On a Mac With Boot Camp
With all this in mind and assuming you have an Intel Mac, here’s how to install Windows 11 on a Mac with Boot Camp.
- Firstly, you’ll need at least 64GB or more free storage space on your Mac startup disk to install Windows 11 using Boot Camp. This is the bare minimum you’ll need but we strongly recommend at least 128GB of free storage space as automatic Windows updates will quickly eat up that space. The Windows 11 download is around 5GB alone so if you’re running low on disk space, you may need to recover some hard drive space on your Mac to download it. Alternatively, you can also use an external hard drive to install Windows on using Boot Camp and run it on your Mac but you’ll need to make sure you format the drive first in MS-DOS (FAT) format otherwise Boot Camp will not recognize it.
- You’ll also need a USB stick with at least 5GB of storage space on to put the Windows 11 ISO file on.
- Although installing Windows 11 using Boot Camp is perfectly safe, we also recommend backing-up your Mac with Time Machine before starting.
With this in mind, follow these instructions to install Windows 11 on a Mac using Boot Camp.
- Download the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft which is the third option down on the page. When you click the blue Download button it will then prompt you to select the Product Language which should be English. Be warned that there are some websites that have published workarounds to install Windows 11 on a Mac that bypass the TPM requirement by using a modified ISO image of Windows. However, we do not recommended using these modified ISO images as they’re not officially supported and are likely to be broken by updates to Windows 11 or macOS in the future. It will also be very difficult to apply updates to unofficial installations of Windows 11 on a Mac so we strongly advise against it. We strongly recommend using the official Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft and modifying the registry manually as instructed later in this tutorial.
- Click the blue Confirm button to confirm the language and the Download link will appear at the bottom of the page. Click on 64-bit Download to start downloading the Windows 11 ISO onto your Mac.
- Insert a USB stick into your Mac and open the Boot Camp assistant which you can find by searching in Spotlight on your Mac for “Boot Camp” or by going to Applications > Utilities > Boot Camp Assistant.
- Click Continue and then select both “Create a Windows 10 or later install disc” (this includes Windows 11) and “Install Windows 10 or later version.”
- Click Continue on your Mac and browse to the Windows 11 ISO file that you downloaded earlier to create the installer on the USB drive. Boot Camp will do this automatically for you when you click Continue.
- You must then decide how much space you want Windows to occupy on your Mac hard drive by dragging the bars representation macOS and Windows. It’s important you estimate this correctly as you cannot resize the partition later. The minimum partition for Windows 11 is 64GB but the more Windows applications or games you intend to install, the more amount of hard drive you should dedicate to Windows. If you need to clear some space on your Mac, you can also get an external hard drive.
- Click Install and Boot Camp will restart your Mac and then take you through the Windows 11 installer just as if your were installing Windows 11 for the first time on a PC. If you are using battery power, Boot Camp will advise you to connect your Mac to the main electricity as the installation will not complete successfully if the battery dies half way through.
Boot Camp will then begin to install Windows 11 on your Mac.
If during this process you receive the error message: “Can’t install the software because it is not currently available from the software server” then you need to download the Windows support manually in Boot Camp. To do this, restart your Mac and Boot Camp and go to Action > Download Windows Support Software.
During the Windows 11 installation process you need to take an extra step to “trick” Windows into thinking your Mac is compatible with it.
The reason is because Windows 11 requires a physical TPM 2.0 module which Macs do not have.
If you try and install the Microsoft Windows 11 ISO without taking the following step, you will receive a “This computer is incompatible with Windows 11” warning during the installation because it will check for the TPM 2.0 chip on your Mac.
The following steps are essential to bypass the TPM check in the Windows 11 installer in order to install Windows 11 on a Mac.
Follow these instructions to bypass the TPM restriction to install Windows 11 on a Mac.
- When the Windows 11 setup screen appears, do not click “Install Now”. Instead, press “Shift+F10” to open the command prompt in Windows.
- In the Command Prompt Window type: “regedit” to open the Registry Editor in Windows 11.
In the Registry Editor browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup. Right click on the Setup folder and select New > Key.
Set a new name called LabConfig for the key and right click on it. Select New > DWORD (32-bit) and give it the name BypassTPMCheck.
- You must then repeat the above process to bypass the RAM check and Secure Boot check respectively by naming the keys ByPassRAMCheck and BypassSecureBootCheck.
- The final step is to double click on these three values you have created and set them to “1”.
You can then quit the Registry Editor and Command Prompt to return to the Windows 11 installer and click “Install Now” to install Windows 11 on your Mac successfully.
- If you are prompted with the message, “Let’s connect you to a network” then you can skip this step. To skip the network connection when installing Windows 11 with Boot Camp press the “Shift + F10” keyboard shortcut. In Command Prompt, type “OOBE\BYPASSNRO” and hit Enter. Your system will then reboot and you’ll see the option to Skip this step.
Once you’ve installed Windows 11 in Boot Camp, you can use Windows just as if you were on a PC.
If you want to switch back to macOS at any time, simply shut down your Mac and then restart by holding down the Option key as you turn it on.
You will then be given the choice to boot in either macOS or Windows.
Related
84 Responses
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Steppe i have the problem that under Sonoma 14.2 no external drive can be used to install the bootcamp partition, do you know any workaround?
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DeitoPlayz I had a question, do we really need to skip the network connection step?
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MacHow2 You can skip it to speed up the installation process and then connect when Windows is installed. But if you prefer to get connected immediately then don’t skip it.
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Ido After the media creation tool finishes to download windows 11 it opens the auto u[grade 11 screen (cmd) and then says: “started IsoLayout” and after it finishes it says: “waiting for 7 seconds, press a key to continue…” and after I press a key (the space key) it rights: “DONE” and then stops doing anything, is there anything that I can do?
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Max Hello, this is the problem:
I installed windows 10 via bootcamp, everything works perfectly, then I decided to upgrade to windows 11. After installation, when the bootcamp program starts, a blue screen appears and the computer reboots. Without the bootcamp program, the touchpad and other functions do not work. The problem is in the bootcamp program itself, since it is not optimized for Windows 11. Is there a way to run bootcamp on Windows 11 without a blue screen?Reply
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Dev the speakers and microphone is not working and can’t see the bootcamp icon on windows taskbar and anywhere in the search while on windows. Please sort this out
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MacHow2 Have you downloaded and installed the Boot Camp support software which includes the audio drivers?
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Sha How in the world do I press Shift + f10 on a Mac with a Touch Bar? The Touch Bar isn’t active when booting into windows setup
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MacHow2 It does state in the tutorial that the only way to install Windows 11 on a Touch Bar Mac is to install Windows 10 and then upgrade to Windows 11 from within Windows due to the lack of F10 key.
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Jay Hi MacHow2.
Thanks for this install I would have been completely stumped without it.I successfully installed Win 11 Pro 22H2, this was a fresh install from windows 10 Bootcamp. My m/c is MBP 2019 / Touch Bar.
Note, you can use function keys on Touch Bar: press Fn on keyboard and corresponding Fn key you want on Touch Bar. I didn’t need this during install.
caveats:
TMP 2.0 regedit – do the edit on whatever drive the installation is running from, in my case it was D:Although I ran the upgrade option from the official ISO, it seemed to be a fresh install as all the Bootcamp drivers were overwritten. So when win11 install completes and begins to setup I found all MBP input devices & wifi non-functioning
Plugged in a Logitech receiver and was able to use already paired mouse and keyboard. Same with internet, I had a usb-c/ethernet dongle which I was able to use. Wired keybd/mouse would def work.
Installation of bootcamp drivers seemed to work but some drivers had failed, using the bootcamp drivers repair option sorted this.
Windows 11 does a have a few issues on bootcamp – to be expected as not officially supported. I found that parallels desktop VM to Bootcamp kept freezing when left idle, Parallels team suggest this fix which seemed to have worked for me:
https://forum.parallels.com/threads/windows-11-vm-freezing-after-idle.360314/
So, now I’m tackling installing my windows software…
Hope this proves useful to someone.
Thanks again MACHOW2 Team
Jay -
MacHow2 Thanks for sharing your experiences and glad you found the tutorial useful!
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Justin You can also use a USB keyboard that does have the F keys.
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Alexs Win 11 installed successfully in iMac 2013. Thanks for the post!
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daniel 10 or 11? 11 is easier you dont have to edit anything rufus does all the work when you burn the usb.
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Michael Wildman I am trying to upgrade Win 10 in Bootcamp on a Mac Mini Late 2012. I did all the bypass suggestions and even rebooted but still get the unsupported CPU and secure boot errors. I don’t get the TPM error and I also did the reg edit AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU in the MoSetup key. Any suggestions?
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Michael Sean Edmond did yiu bypass the CPU Check, RAM, and Storage? Those are all separate entries by the way.
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Asim Esen I have 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro. I have Windows 10 installed on a 128-GB partition. Could you explain how to install Windows 11 on this partition since I have a Touch Bar (No F10 key)? Thanks.
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MacHow2 Unfortunately on a Touch Bar Mac the lack of F10 key means you need to install Windows 10 on your Mac first and then upgrade to Windows 11.
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jj I have a 13 inch macbook pro 2015 but when I wanted to install win 11 on it via this boot thing, it said that win 11 can’t be installed on this machine. Any thoughts? Thanks.
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MacHow2 It maybe because you skipped the step to bypass the Windows 11 TPM check. Did you press “Shift + 10” instead of “Install Now” to open the Command Prompt and access the Registry Editor first during the installation process?
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Vince Hi, was I supposed to make a key in separate folder for ByPassRAMCheck and BypassSecureBootCheck ? Instructions not very clear and I am stuck now and it restarted saying ”Why did my PC restart?” and I can’t even boot to MacOS.
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BH When I try to click continue in Boot Camp is says to remove any external drives (my thumb drive). Not sure how to get past this step.
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Prateek Ahlawat doesnt let me continue after inseting usb drive
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Angga Aripin Hey i tried to install win 11 on my macbook pro 2016 with touchbar, and everything is fine until the shift+f10 part. As the f10 key is not at display and i can’t do anything about it, so i restarted the mac now i stuck in icon lock. I put in my code but it doesn’t work/does nothing. and i read online about all the commands keys, (cmd + r, cmd+alt+r, hold option) Please could you help me?
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MacHow2 With a Touch bar Mac, your best option is to install Windows 10 with Boot Camp and then upgrade to Windows 11 from there because of the function key requirement in the Windows 11 setup process.
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Ronald Lockwich Boot camp doesn’t even let me start with a usb flash drive plugged in. Keeps telling me to remove the extended storage before allowing to click continue in which the next screen is straight to select the ISO file and partition. MacOS is 100% up to date with 13.2.1 – I guess they changed it since your guide.
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V Excellent guide. Small problem here, installation of Windows 11 on a partition of Mac Airbook 2017 Intel processor has been successful, all the way up until the “Let’s connect you to a network” step in setup. Simply stuck here with no options. Do I need to hardwire? Install some drivers during installation?
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MacHow2 You can click on “Skip Now” in the bottom left corner and then connect to a Network in Windows with Windows Device Manager.
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Alexs Use the “Shift + F10” keyboard shortcut. In Command Prompt, type the OOBE\BYPASSNRO an hit enter.The system reboot and appear the option to skip.
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Rafi From bootcamp assistant, after selecting win11 IS and click on install, I am getting following error”Can’t install the software because it is not currently available from the Software Update server.:
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MacHow2 You can try downloading the files manually. To do this, restart your Mac and Boot Camp and go to Action > Download Windows Support Software.
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Victor What folder do I save the windows support software?
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MacHow2 You need to format a USB drive on your Mac and you can save the support drivers anywhere on it.
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Julie Goodison The computer restarted unexpectedly and installation cant proceed.
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Jordan My Mac doesn’t have a F10 key 🙁 because it’s a Macbook Pro with touchbar. Any workarounds?
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MacHow2 With a Touch bar Mac, your best option is to install Windows 10 and then upgrade to Windows 11 from there because of the function key requirement in the Windows 11 setup process.
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nyquist212 You should have a Fn key that will show the function buttons in the task bar.
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RonW you can quickly plug a USB keyboard, hit shift-F10 and plug it out.
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Michael This does not work on MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017) 3.1 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5. After adding values into the registry I get an error and windows tells me that it cannot continue with the install. Please help.
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Reece danny Hardiman I had to attempt this a few times, I’d like to point out to other people following this guide that when you creqte the Dword Values, do not include the full stop while copying them from this website. It took me a few attempts before realising this was my issue, however aside from this, It’s a great tutorial thank you for helping me get W11 up and running!
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Hisham Fawzy Is this trick works with older versions of Imac (late 2013) as well?
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MacHow2 You can install Windows 10 using Boot Camp on a late 2013 iMac although Windows 11 is untested.
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Darren Lim Can’t install the software because it is not currently available from the Software Update server.
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MacHow2 This is usually a temporary problem on Microsoft’s servers and should work if you try again.
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Jayce Hello. What’s the difference performance wise between games and software used on Windows via Bootcamp versus Parallels? I can’t decide whether to wait and purchase a MacBook Pro the first quarter of next year when the M2 chip comes out, or to right now purchase a used 2019 64GB AMD 5600m model with the Intel i9 so that I can still use Bootcamp. This sucks.
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MacHow2 Our advice would be to definitely to get the M2 MacBook Pro. Increasingly, many Windows only games are available on Cloud gaming services which you can use on Mac (although they do require a subscription). More and more apps and games will drop support for Macs with Intel chips as Apple Silicon becomes standard so it really doesn’t make sense to buy an Intel Mac nowadays. You can read more on this in our guide on the best ways to play Windows games on Mac.
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Spike Lightfoot Boot Camp Assistant apparently checks to see which Windows version the ISO file contains, and it it’s Windows 11 it won’t download the Windows support software. If the ISO file is Windows 10 it proceeds normally. So this method no longer works as published for Windows 11.
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Sarah Dow Bootcamp assistant won’t run with an external storage device attached
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MacHow2 The external drive needs to be formatted in MS-DOS (FAT) to be recognized by Boot Camp. You can find instructions how to format an external hard drive here.
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Her0mx This work too for fix the ISSUE on Vmware Fusion. thanks
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Timothy Vinckier These steps doesn’t work for me. I don’t have the option the check ‘Windows 10 or later versions’ … I can just select a Windows 10 ISO file and determine the size of the Bootcamp.
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Andy When following steps, I never get Windows 11 setup screen as described. It boots right into Windows 11 install. So no chance to run REGEDIT. And therefore I get “This PC doesn’t meet minimum system requirements” error and I’m dead in the water. When I press SHIFT+F10 before seeing the Windows installer, it puts me into MacOS safe boot. And by the time I see a windows logo, pressing SHIFT+F10 has no effect and it dives right into the installer. I cannot get these instructions to work. Which is unfortunate, because only other way I see to get this to work online is to install Windows 10 and then upgrade to Windows 11 within Boot Camp. That’d be a much longer and tedious path that I was hoping to avoid.
Any advice appreciated.
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MacHow2 Have you tried installing Windows 11 on a Mac using a virtual machine instead? It’s much easier than using Boot Camp and allows you to switch between macOS and Windows at the same time.
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Kyle I had to press fn+Shift+F10 whilst the installer was open to get command prompt
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James D. Maxon I get this error when running the Boot Camp Assistant: “Can’t install the software because it’s not currently available from the Software Update Server.”
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MacHow2 I sounds like it may be an issue with your internet connection or a temporary server error. It may also be caused if by not having enough hard drive space to install the Windows updates that Boot Camp is trying to install. Make sure you’ve got at least 16GB of space free for the updates.
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Daniel Evans I think they changed the boot camp software with an update. Possibly maybe. Cause it doesn’t work for me either.
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LYC I used the method on my IMAC 1 month ago smoothly but occurred the same error yesterday on on MBA. Both macOS were upgraded recently. I guess Apple is forbidding people to install Win11 to prevent them from further installation error.
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Bohdan How are you supposed to press F10 on a touch-bar Mac? The bar is disabled during the setup…
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Jackson I had to plug in an external keyboard to press F10.
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Muaadh Azeez Could you elaberate on the final step.
shoup you make seperate keys and name those also labconfig?
or do you go to a different location to enter those?Reply
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Gianni Barberi interesting, imac is set as english but before I successfully installed windows 10 in italian. What I’m trying now is English international.
Next time I’ll look into log filesReply
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Gianni Windows cannot install files error code 0x80070070
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Gianni Barberi I receve this error installing Win11_EnglishInternational_x64v1
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MacHow2 That sounds like something related to the language settings on your Mac.
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Robert Bolstad A very informative article, many thanks. I have a question: if I purchase Windows11 on a flash drive from a retailer, do I still need to download and open the iso file on MicroSoft’s website?
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Jacob Yeah, that will happen with Windows 11. There’s two ways to get around it, either by booting into audit mode (pressing CTRL+SHIFT+F3 in the OOBE (first time setup)), installing Bootcamp drivers, and then using SysPrep to return to the setup, or pressing SHIFT+F10 in the setup, opening task manager by typing taskmgr, and finding and ending the Network Connection Flow task.
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love No internet is needed. Just pick the option at the bottom without internet. Wifi option will be available after Windows installed.
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Joel Schwartz You still need to purchase a windows product key, yes?
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MacHow2 No, you don’t need a Windows 11 product key unless you want to customize Windows or remove the activation watermark. You can use Windows 11 for as long as you want without a product key to activate it.
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Gareth I had a problem where it couldn’t find any wifi networks (I suspect it needs the bootcamp drivers) and it needs internet access to continue
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Alan Baker Some people DO READ. The article was disjointed in some areas and referred to another article which commented on non-Bootcamp installation, not within the main article itself. I would have replied to the original answer earlier, but it’s just not worth it.
Why not get off your pompous arse and write something that’s actually useful?
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Ano Nymous I love your reply. Some people just don’t read.
Bootcamp is not supported on Mac computers with Silicon chip (M1).
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Alan Baker You say that you can’t install Windows 11 on a Mac M1. That’s not true. I have it running under Parallels and apart from 2 programs, everything so far runs just fine. The best thing about using Parallels for this that I can run Mailwasher on Windows, then flip to Mail on the Mac side and collect emails I want.
In fact the Windows side has just got me out of trouble. Trying to make a uSD disk image of Octopi and MacOS wouldn’t let me get past a not required password stage. Rather than search for a fix, I went straight to Windows 11 and ran the same disk imager (Win version) and it worked just fine.Reply
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MacHow2 The article actually states that you can’t install Windows 11 on a Mac using Boot Camp – which is true. Boot Camp does not work with M1 Macs.
As you point out, however you can install install Windows 11 on M1 Macs using Parallels. Thanks for sharing your experiences using it.Reply
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Ethan Howard After getting passed the bypass TPM everything was going well until it kept saying “Why did my PC Restart” Then it says “There’s a problem that’s preventing us from getting your PC ready to use but we think an update will help get things working again Here’s how to get the update
1. Make sure your PC is plugged in2. If this PC uses WiFi, select Next to follow instructions to connect to a WiFi network
3. If this PC does not use We insert a network cable to connect to a wired network and select Next.
4. Once you’re connected, select Next and the update will install”
I don’t know what to do from here, please help.
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As an enthusiast and expert in running Windows on Macs, I'm well-versed in various methods and utilities available to achieve this. The article you've shared from MacHow2 covers the installation of Windows 11 on Intel-based Macs using Boot Camp, highlighting its limitations and recommending alternative methods for Apple Silicon-based Macs.
Here's an overview of the concepts and information covered in the article:
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Boot Camp Overview:
- Boot Camp is a utility that allows the installation of Windows on Intel-based Macs.
- Limitations include the inability to run Apple Silicon-based Macs (M1, M2, M3) with Boot Camp.
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Best Method to Run Windows 11:
- Virtual machines, especially Parallels, are recommended over Boot Camp for running Windows 11 on Mac.
- Parallels allows running macOS and Windows simultaneously and supports automatic Windows 11 installation.
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Compatibility with Apple Silicon Macs:
- Boot Camp does not work with Apple Silicon Macs (M1, M2, M3).
- Virtual machines like Parallels work on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.
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Installation Process with Boot Camp:
- Requirements: Sufficient storage space (at least 64GB), USB stick (5GB), and a Windows 11 ISO file.
- Steps include using Boot Camp Assistant, downloading the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft, partitioning storage for Windows, and installing Windows 11 through Boot Camp.
- Special steps required to bypass TPM 2.0 module checks during Windows 11 installation.
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Troubleshooting and User Queries:
- Various troubleshooting steps and solutions are provided for common issues encountered during the installation process, such as errors, missing keys on Touch Bar Macs, network connectivity issues, etc.
- The article features a section of user queries and responses addressing specific problems faced during installation.
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Updates and Disclaimers:
- Updates and disclaimers caution users against using unofficial workarounds or modified ISO images for Windows 11 installation on Macs as they might lead to future issues.
The article showcases a comprehensive guide to installing Windows 11 on Macs through Boot Camp, acknowledges its limitations, and provides alternative solutions like using Parallels for a smoother experience, especially on Apple Silicon-based Macs. Additionally, it addresses user queries and troubleshooting, offering detailed steps for a successful installation process while emphasizing the importance of using official software and methods for stability and future updates.
