Please Help!! Bootcamp can't partition!

[FedoraTime]

Hi, tearing my hair out so thought I'd ask some experts

I have a late 2013 iMac 27" (14,2), running Ventura (thanks to OCLP).

I now need to install Windows using BootCamp. Followed the instructions properly but when it gets to the part where it makes room on the internal SSD, it fails saying "Can't partition this drive, use First Aid to repair disk" or words similar to that.

The drive is fine, I ran First Aid anyway but I know it's fine.

I can't think what else it might be. I even went into recovery mode and tried to manually partition the drive in Disk Utility but in there the + icon is greyed out, looks like something is preventing anyone being able to partition this drive for some reason. It's a 2TB SSD with over 1TB spare room so it's not a space issue.

Grateful for any brainwaves
Thanks

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

First guess is the internal drive is formatted as APFS and I think I recall that bootcamp doesn't have a driver to work with APFS. That may have changed in the last few years- I don't know. But if it is formatted APFS, you may need to reformat to HFS+.

Again- not 100% sure- but I would guess you can clone your APFS disc as is, then reformat the internal so you can partition space for Windows (Exfat/Fat) and install bootcamp to use that partition for Windows stuff. And then- probably (but not sure), reformat the other partition as APFS- if you wish- and put all of your Mac files back in that partition.

APFS uses volumes instead of traditional partitions and bootcamp may need traditional HFS+ partitions for the Windows part. I don't know this for sure but think I'm recalling that correctly.

All of the above is leaning on fading memories of how bootcamp works with Mac and may be wrong. Before taking such (relatively) drastic actions, you may want to let others chime in and/or do deeper research online. I'm probably towards about 65% confident on the above but that leaves plenty of room to be wrong.

Now that Apple has basically killed bootcamp with Silicon, I forked with the change by buying a dedicated PC in a Mac-Mini-like case for Windows stuff. When that 2013 conks, you might want to go that way yourself. Unlike Mac, one can get a lot of PC for not much money thanks to abundant competition in PCs, RAM & Storage outside the walled garden.

OR, perhaps convert that 2013 iMac into being only a PC and buy yourself a new Silicon Mac, as you are now well past the vintage window and carry risks tied to security updates (even OCLP is a hack lacking complete confidence about security risks). If so, the entire internal disc becomes a PC disk formatted for Windows and you'll have a pretty solid Windows PC until it conks.

 

[FedoraTime]

Thanks so much for taking the time for such a thoughtful reply. I am at my wits end really, with Mac in general. But sadly I MUST use it for work, so I have this superb machine (32GB RAM, i7, 3 nice screens, all set up nice and running great), but I need to use IT for Windows (as I need 3 screens for one program only available on Windows).

I guess the only option left is VirtualBox, which would probably work just fine, but it really grates me to be running Mac underneath, wasting a ton of system resources on an OS I don't need. Basically I need a full day on Windows (for this program usage), and rest of time I need Mac but no need for windows, so BootCamp is the perfect solution. If only it would frigging work. I can't get my head around all these terms, HFS, APFS..... I know you can't be ignorant and expect solutions to problems, but I just don't have the time to learn it all just for this purpose, so may have to try Virtual Box first. I would REALLY like BootCamp though because I dont know if a VM can make full use of all my screens, and i do KNOW it can't get full use of hardware/performance while running in a virtual machine.

Thanks again for your reply though, let's hope someone else might be able to chime in and confirm/deny any of the above, to see if there's something I can try without wiping my data etc.

Oh and PS - Is there any chance it's just due to FileVault being turned on? I thought I read something on another forum about that, saying you can't partition FV encrypted drives. I do have FV on. I guess I couild try turning it off and retrying the bootcamp process,but I have no idea how long it takes to decrypt after turning it off (before I can try partitioning), or how to know when it's finished.

 

[FedoraTime]

PPS - I just turned off Filevault and it says 2 hrs remaining, so that answers that. I will let it complete then see if the Bootcamp process works to partition the drive. Any other tips in the mean time would be appreciated if anyone has any! thanks

 

[FedoraTime]

Well turning off FV helped a lot. It made the partition just fine afterwards.

Unfortunately it's too soon to celebrate. It rebooted to begin installing windows11, first screen had the windows logo then an error which says:

"Your PC needs to be repaired. An unexpected error has occurred. Error code: 0xc000000e"

Grateful for any ideas. my only thought (as I have confirmed USB media is good, tried a brand new one) is that it MAY be because I have a Firmware password set on the iMac. I have turned that off and tried again. Almost hooray, it got past that error, got my first 'windows' type 'window', and in it it says:
"Windows 11 Setup
Windows installation encountered an unexpected error. Error code: 0xE0000219 - 0x40031"

Out of ideas now. Grateful if anyone else isn't

 

[FedoraTime]

Wondering whether to try Win10 instead. Out of ideas otherwise

 

[Nermal]

Windows 11 is not officially supported on Boot Camp. It may be possible to get it working, but it's probably easiest to stick with 10.

 

[FedoraTime]

Thanks. I learned about that, apparenhtly due to lack of TPM2.0 and Secure Boot on Intel iMacs. However I did the regedit as Win installer started to bypass those checks which I am reliably informed should make it work, many people manage to install W11 that way. But i don't get to the screens after that, I get the same error again.
I will try Win10 now, failing that I will have to call it a dismal failure and go for VirtualBox option, far from ideal but at least it gets me windows
thanks to all above, and of course any other ideas very welcome at this point

 

[FedoraTime]

Well God knows how but I finally got Windows 10 running. Not going to bother risking messing it up by pushing to W11.
I still did the Regedit stuff to bypass TPM and SecureBoot checks, just in case I want to upgrade to 11 later and forget how to do that (even though my edits may get overwritten)

It wasn't nice, had to turn off FV, turn off my Firmware password (both of which I intend to turn back on and hope it doesn't bugger it all up!)

But it;s working. And I used the superb tool from https://christitus.com/windows-tool/ to strip out some junk and telemetry etc.
Thanks everyone who chimed in above.