Bootcamp Windows 10 installation with Macbook Air Mid 2013 on Samsung Evo 970

I think this post is to repay the community. There were so much information that helped my during my searches that I feel I need to pay back.

Here's the back story. I purchased a Macbook Air A1466 mid 2013 to do some coding for iOS. However, the laptop came with only 128gb of hard disk space. At the time of purchase, I was fine with it. iOS development does not require much storage space. Then comes the Minecraft Bedrock server... I spun one up for the kids, and I made the mistake of playing it with them. Now they expect me to play with them on Saturdays. So, in order to have enough WINDOWS 10 machines, I have to figure out a way to get Windows 10 onto this Mac, knowing that bootcamp is an option.

I bought a 500gb Samsung Evo NVME 970 card with a Micro-Connector adapter for the macbook ssd slot. I did not know at the time that there are some major incompatibilities with the Apple and 3rd party SSD cards+adapter setup for Bootcamp. After multiple days of failed attempts of various trial and error, I was able to find a successful setup. I am now running Big Sur and 20H2 with no issues.

There are many guides and great advice out there, so I will not create another guide. Here are some lessons that I learned... Hopefully it'll help someone.

1. Keep your Mac plugged in for the entire process even if you are at 100%. Windows power settings introduces another variable that can cause instability. Keeping it plugged in will allow you to not have to worry about that.
2. The adapter required High Sierra or later macOS to recognize the SSD. I had to reinstall my old SSD to get a bootable USB so that the laptop will recognize it. So depend on your model and the OS that it comes with, go ahead and make one of these to start with to save some headaches in the future.
3. Since bootcamp will download the latest bootcamp drivers, I would just download them once and save them on your windows 10 installation USB. By the way, go ahead and create one of these and set it aside with the proper bootcamp and $WinPEDrivers folder. It'll save lots of time in downloading and redownloading.
4. Start with Mojave for the MacOS, and the lowest Win10 version. The version I started with for maximum compatibility is Mojave with Win 10 - 1607.
5. Use RUFUS obtain older versions of windows.
6. Download the Bootcamp version 5.1.5640 which was released close to the time of this macbook air mid 2013.
7. Upon seeing the Critical Process Died BSOD, allow the system to restart, or just turn it off and turn it back on and try to get back into the Bootcamp EFI. Don't freak out. There's still hope.
8. When you see the message "The computer restarted or encountered an unexpected error. Windows install cannot proceed. To install click Ok to restart the computer, and then restart the installation", hit Shift+F10 which will bring up the Command Prompt. Type in "regedit" and press enter. Change the value of "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\Status\ChildCompletion" to 3, and save changes, close Registry Editor, and reboot. This will allow Windows to start up. Make sure to run Bootcamp setup.
9. If you find that your computer goes to BSOD after being disconnected from AC power, change your power settings to High Performance. This will take care of this issue.
10. Allow your windows update to take place slowly and be patient. Do not attempt to reinstall any drivers. If your stuff is working, do not update drivers.

That's pretty much all I can remember at the moment. I have seen all kinds of different kind of errors depending on the trial I was doing at the time. If you run across something, feel free to ask here.

If this post is useless, feel free to ignore it. I am not a mac expert by any stretch.

Cheers!