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Bootcamp Nightmare

Daisy81

Daisy81

Suspended
Original poster
Dec 29, 2015
366
187
Virginia
What am I doing wrong?!

I opened bootcamp assistant. It asked me for my Windows image. I pointed it to the image. After that I clicked install. It made the partitions and booted into the Windows 10 Pro x64 installer. From there the whole thing imploded!!!!

It gave some error message about not being able to upgrade. Then I went into clean install. I found the partition that was for bootcamp. It looks like bootcamp assistant didn't format the partition as NTFS. So I erased it and reformatted it as NTFS. Windows 10 setup then showed that it could install there. I selected it and clicked next and then got a error message. It would not go past it to install Windows.

In disgust I deleted the windows partitions and left them unallocated and rebooted into restore mode. I get into disk utility and it shows half the drive free but won't allow me to expand the Macintosh HD. I had to nuke the entire SSD and restore from my time machine backup.

This whole thing has me so mad. It's implied that bootcamp is easy to setup but from my experience its anything but. I want to scream obscenities right now I'm so mad. I'm on my Mac Mini right now watching the iMac restore the drive. I hope for the love of God that Time Machine works better then boot camp. #$%!@
 
You can't manually format to NTFS with the disk utility.
What year is your machine? Only 2012 and newer have support for W10.
 
It's a Late 2015 iMac 5K Core i7, 395X, 1TB SSD.

I didn't format to NTFS using disk utility. I clearly said I did that in the windows install because bootcamp assistant didn't. Then the Windows Installer refused to install onto the NTFS partition. This is where I then erased it, rebooted, went into system restore and found that disk utility can't see unformatted space on the drive or at least space that was NTFS and deleted.

On the bright side it looks like time machine worked flawlessly and my iMac is fully restored. However I was still hoping to play Fallout 4 on this machine and see what it looks like in 5K.
 
Daisy81 said:
I found the partition that was for bootcamp. It looks like bootcamp assistant didn't format the partition as NTFS. So I erased it and reformatted it as NTFS. Windows 10 setup then showed that it could install there. I selected it and clicked next and then got a error message. It would not go past it to install Windows.
Click to expand...

What was the error message?
Everything up to that point was normal. The Mac can't format the NTFS partition (because Apple doesn't want to pay the NTFS license fees to Microsoft) so you always need to let the Windows installer do it. Why Apple doesn't put some sort of instructions to that effect in their instructions is beyond me.
It sounds like you were almost there so getting past that error message is your only hurdle.

Which Mac do you have and how many partitions did you have before you began the Bootcamp process?
 
The above is correct, you need to NTFS format the BootCamp partition within the Window's installer at the partition display page. Don't try to mess with the partitions within the Windows installer however (you know this now).

If you have a problem, your best recovery is to try using BootCamp Assistant to remove the BootCamp partition back to a 100% OS X disk, then start over again. If that can't do it, then you are probably going to have to format and restore from your backup.

Good luck ...
 
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Time machine worked. So my take away from this is boot camp is worthless.

I don't recall what the error message was. I'm not trying again. I followed the directions Apple provided and they where useless and left me with a defunct machine.

What a half ass piece of garbage.
 
I know when I install Windows 10 on my iMac 5k (Late 2014) that it was a pain in the buttocks. :eek::(:D

I know when I partition the drive it through me for a loop, but unfortunately my memory isn't as good as it used to be. All I know it was counter intuitive what Apple was saying, I think it was saying what partition the HD was booting from before windows 10 was installed. I just wished I could remember, darn it. Anyways, if you decide to do it again I would just recommend taking a breather when you get to that part and look it over while having a cup of coffee. As always make sure you have a good copy of Time Machine just in case. ;)
 
I had a ton issues trying to install windows 8.1 on my late 2015 5k iMac as well. Similar issues to you where windows would not finish the install, or let me start. In the end I would have 5 or 6 partitions on the ssd with no resolution. Two hours on the phone with apple care resulted in no solution as well.

What finally worked? I manually partitioned the hard drive with disk utility, installed os x, than used a usb install for windows. Since then, I have had absolutely no issues. It really runs smooth with windows 10.
 
Gjwilly said:
What was the error message?
Everything up to that point was normal. The Mac can't format the NTFS partition (because Apple doesn't want to pay the NTFS license fees to Microsoft) so you always need to let the Windows installer do it. Why Apple doesn't put some sort of instructions to that effect in their instructions is beyond me.
It sounds like you were almost there so getting past that error message is your only hurdle.

Which Mac do you have and how many partitions did you have before you began the Bootcamp process?
Click to expand...
It's a late 2015 iMac 5K Core i7, 16GB RAM, 395X, 1TB SSD.

Before I attempted to install windows my SSD was one partition. I split the drive giving my OS X install 450GB and the remaining to the Windows partition. While in Windows setup there where a lot of little small partitions.

Since I know how to restore my Mac from a fully failed attempt I can try again a little later.

The gist of the error was it wouldn't install on the drive. :(
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Dksiazek said:
I had a ton issues trying to install windows 8.1 on my late 2015 5k iMac as well. Similar issues to you where windows would not finish the install, or let me start. In the end I would have 5 or 6 partitions on the ssd with no resolution. Two hours on the phone with apple care resulted in no solution as well.

What finally worked? I manually partitioned the hard drive with disk utility, installed os x, than used a usb install for windows. Since then, I have had absolutely no issues. It really runs smooth with windows 10.
Click to expand...
so if I partition my drive manually and use a usb thumb stick or cd install media on the usb disc drive I can install it manually?

How do i load the drivers for the trackpad and keyboard? How do I get the boot disk to boot?

Thanks :)
 
re-check or re-download your install file. I've had this issue before, it usually is the install media being corrupt in some way.
Do just as you did before, let bootcamp restart and go into the Win setup procedure, choose custom rather than upgrade, format the bootcamp partition to NTFS and continue on. If the install media is fine you should be running Windows soon after.
 
The Windows 10 image is good. I used the same thumbtack to install my actual PC and the VM that my iMac and Mac Mini run.

I think I may have found an alternative. I don't know if it is going to work but I managed to install Wineskin, create a wrapper and have the windows version of steam running. It's downloading Fallout 4 now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
 
jerwin said:
This may seem weird, but try disconnecting all external drives before installing windows.
Click to expand...
Took me about 4 hours messing with trying to install Win 10. I had all the same problems mentioned in this thread. Was using an image that was on my external drive. After transferring the image to my mac ssd and then disconnecting my external drive, success! Took me all but 10 mins to get Win 10 up and running. I guess the external drive is messing with the partitions when using bootcamp to install another OS.
 
I had a very similar issue. There's something fishy with the automated partitioning. If you try again, note the error message and Google it. For me, I found a guide with a fix that involved exiting the installer, using a command prompt command to fix the partition, and then re-entering the installer. It worked without a problem at that point. I'd give you the guide I used but I can't recall the error message and can't find the guide in my history.

I was installing Windows 10 on a late 2015 5k iMac.
 
oldschool25 said:
Took me about 4 hours messing with trying to install Win 10. I had all the same problems mentioned in this thread. Was using an image that was on my external drive. After transferring the image to my mac ssd and then disconnecting my external drive, success! Took me all but 10 mins to get Win 10 up and running. I guess the external drive is messing with the partitions when using bootcamp to install another OS.
Click to expand...

Could you or anyone who uses win10 test how the scaling works if you use for example 2560x1440p, does it look as good as on the same setting on OSX? And also what happens in photoshop with this setting.
 
Daisy81 said:
So my take away from this is boot camp is worthless.
Click to expand...
My steps were
1. Run bootcamp asst; Pointed to the win 10 iSO; Defined the bootcamp partition.
2. Computer rebooted and the win10 setup started
3. Selected the bootcamp partition in the installer and reformatted that to NTFS (as windows won't install on anything else).
4. Installed windows.
 
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Do you have any USB drives mounted. I believe there is a bug on with Bootcamp and the late 2015 iMacs where you must unplug all the USB drives before using boot camp.
 
Thanks everyone. I'm out of town at the moment and while I do have my iMac with me I don't have my external drive with the Time Machine backup on it with me. When I get home this weekend I'll give it another shot.

I had a 5TB Seagate USB3 drive and a Apple USB Super Drive connected at the time.

When I try again is this what I should do:
1: Unplug all USB devices from the iMac.
2: Run Bootcamp assistant, point it to my Windows 10 Install Disc Image, have it create the partition and click install.
3: When it boots into Windows setup reformat the bootcamp partition into NTFS.
4: Install windows as normal.

I'm not clear on why my attempt failed. Other then unplug everything that is what I did. It's not like I was trying to install Windows onto the external drive. This is very disappointing.

If I can get past the setup what do I do about the drivers? Will my trackpad work with the gestures like it does in OS X?
 
maflynn said:
My steps were
1. Run bootcamp asst; Pointed to the win 10 iSO; Defined the bootcamp partition.
2. Computer rebooted and the win10 setup started
3. Selected the bootcamp partition in the installer and reformatted that to NTFS (as windows won't install on anything else).
4. Installed windows.
Click to expand...
I recently did the same. I did have to reformat the BOOTCAMP partition during the win install, before that, it would not install. All in all, impressively smooth. I had no external drives attached at that time. Lesson learned from installing Windows even on a Win machine. It just does not like that for some reason.
 
cube said:
If you want to run Windows, buy a PC with real support.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the very helpful post. You have been a great help.:rolleyes:

I have a Windows based machine. I built it myself.

The core parts are:
MSI X99A SLI Plus motherboard
Intel Core i7-5930K @4.7GHz
Corsair H100I GTX Water Cooling closed loop
Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz 32GB Memory Kit
Two reference nVidia GeForce GTX 970 in SLI

Now that we got your post out of the way. The reason I want to get boot camp running is because I wanted to get an idea of what the graphics look like in 5K.

My difficulty with bootcamp is in no way changing my view on the iMac. This simply would be a bonus.
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Cape Dave said:
I recently did the same. I did have to reformat the BOOTCAMP partition during the win install, before that, it would not install. All in all, impressively smooth. I had no external drives attached at that time. Lesson learned from installing Windows even on a Win machine. It just does not like that for some reason.
Click to expand...
It looks like I have a plan for this coming weekend.

I can't wait to see how this machine runs Fallout 4.I'll make a comparison video and share my results. I can't wait.
 
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Time Machine did it's job and one short walk on the treadmill later the iMac was back up and operational.

I can play Fallout 4 at 5760x1080 all day long on my primary gaming machine. I can also stream Fallout 4 over steam to my iMac at 5K and play it max settings at 60 FPS using my gaming PC as the host, making bootcamp more of a moot point at this point because now my iMac doesn't even have to warm up when I'm playing games.

The iMac is for iOS/Android programming, Video Editing on the 5K screen (handing off the actual encoding to my PC which has more horsepower).

I simply wanted to try it on the iMac to see what the 5K screen looked like and to make some gaming comparison videos because there is interest in it by other people. I won't lose sleep at night if this doesn't work. I was more upset that I had to nuke the drive and restore it because of the partition issues. This is not the first time I have bad mouthed disk utility and had to do things through terminal in restore mode. I can still make videos documenting the 5K streaming and get plenty of views.
 
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