Once you download your copy of Windows 10 - the full version, not the upgrade - we can begin the installation process. While Boot Camp is very stable, anything can go wrong when you partition your hard drive, and you want to be protected.
You’ll also need at least a 16GB flash drive so Boot Camp can create a bootable drive to install Windows 10.īefore we go any further, you should back up your Mac. Your Mac needs at least 2GB of RAM (4GB of RAM would be better) and at least 30GB of free hard drive space to properly run Boot Camp. The first thing you should do is check the system requirements to make sure your Mac can actually run Windows 10. Right now, the easiest, cheapest, and fastest way to get Windows 10 on your Mac is Boot Camp, and that’s what we’re using for this tutorial. It’s also completely free (apart from the Windows 10 license), and a shared Dropbox / Google Drive / OneDrive folder can make data transfers a bit easier. But it does give Windows full access to the processing power of your Mac. Virtual machines like Parallels and VMware cost upwards of $70 on top of what you already have to pay for Windows 10, and while you can run OS X and Windows simultaneously, the drain on your processing power can force both operating systems to run less than optimally.īoot Camp is the easiest way to get Windows 10 on your Macīoot Camp doesn’t allow you to easily transfer content between OS X and Windows partitions like virtual machines do, and you can’t run the two operating systems simultaneously. You can use a virtualization program, which runs Windows 10 like an app right on top of OS X, or you can use Apple’s built-in Boot Camp program to partition your hard drive to dual-boot Windows 10 right next to OS X. There are two easy ways to install Windows on a Mac. Thanks to Apple creating some helpful tools and some solid third-party options, it’s rather easy to get Windows 10 up and running right alongside OS X. Like most people using MacBooks, I have no interest in getting rid of my laptop, but thankfully I don’t have to buy any new hardware to use Windows 10.
But after seeing how Microsoft has stepped it up with Windows 10 (the Start menu is finally back and Internet Explorer is nearly gone), I’m now interested in giving it a try once again. For Intel processors, look up your own processor model and check for virtualization under “Advanced Features.” For AMD processors, look up your processor model and look for a feature listing called “AMD Virtualization Technology.Windows 8 was bad enough that it forced me - a lifelong Windows user up until that point - to switch my entire family over to Macs. If you don’t know whether your CPU supports hardware virtualization, you can check for yourself on Intel and AMD’s websites. If your system supports hardware virtualization, you can give your virtual machine access to additional CPU cores via the System submenu. Highlight it and click the big Settings button.
When your new virtual PC is ready, it will appear in VirtualBox’s list of available machines (powered off at the moment, we note). Once you’re ready, click Next to create your virtual machine. The 64-bit version needs a minimum of 20GB. On the next screen, make sure that your virtual disk has at least 16GB allocated to it for the 32-bit version of Windows 8. You can select either a “Dynamically allocated” or “Fixed size” virtual hard drive based on your personal preferences–we suggest you use the “Dynamically allocated” disk on our installation. Leave the “Virtual Hard Disk” options and subsequent “Create New Virtual Disk” options exactly as they are, unless you think you’ll need to access your virtual hard drive in a separate virtual machine application.
The 32-bit version of Windows 8 requires 1 gigabyte at minimum, and the 64-bit version requires 2GB, but the more RAM you can give the virtual OS, the better it will run. Click Next, and you’ll be taken to a screen that asks how much memory you’d like to devote to the virtual operating system.