Need help for creating a Windows 11 bootable USB on Mac Ventura?

Bootcamp only works on Intel Mac not Apple Silicon Mac any more. You can use the Terminal to create a bootable USB but it takes a long time to create a Windows 11 bootable USB. The benefit is that this method is completely free but you have to interact with commands to get it done.

If you are not familiar with text command, then you can use third-party like UUByte ISO Editor to create a bootable USB on Apple Silicon Mac. What you need to do is a few mouse clicks. Here is the complete tutorial to demonstrate the process:

https://www.uubyte.com/blog/make-a-windows-11-bootable-usb-on-mac-with-m1-or-m2-chip/

I have been using this app a couple of times and even works perfectly on Ventura 13.2.1.

zilindd5 wrote:

But i just need to create a bootable Windows 11 drive on my Mac and use it to reinstall Windows 11 on my son's PC. I don't have any plan to install Windows 11 on my Mac.

When you say "PC" do you mean a non-Apple computer?

It used to be relatively easy to make a bootable Windows USB stick for a UEFI booting PC using macOS, but beginning with one of the later Windows 10 releases, one of the Windows' installation files became larger than 4GB which made the process to create a bootable Windows 10/11 USB installer on macOS or Linux much harder. Theoretically there are several methods to do this, but when I tried them a few years ago I was unsuccessful. At the time I only made modest attempts to do this because I could not justify the time necessary to figure it out (I'm usually pretty good at making bootable disks like this).

I'm not sure if there is an open source app which can do this automatically...I thought I saw a reference one time, but I don't recall for sure (probably only available for Linux anyway).

A quick Google search reveals this post which describes two possible methods...one involving using the command line (requires install Homebrew which sometimes has been known to break some lower level macOS configuration files), and another using an unknown third party app. Use these at your own risk.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/741412/how-to-create-a-windows-11-bootable-usb-installati

Here is another article showing the same command line option plus another unknown paid third party app (has a trial period)....again use at your own risk:

https://windowsreport.com/windows-11-usb-installer-on-mac/

zilindd5 wrote:

Thanks for the update, Bod. Any workaround to get this done on Apple Silicon Mac?

No. Microsoft offers no version of Windows for Apple silicon for sale. What is available is an insider’s version of Windows for Arm, with no support from Microsoft, and which some folks have gotten to boot via a hypervisor. If you want to run Windows for Intel on Apple silicon, you’ll need an emulator such as UTM, and the results of which which may or may not have the necessary features and performance required.

I’d suggest asking in a Microsoft forum how to recover this PC. I’d have once suggested using a disk image download and a DVD or such, but it appears Windows no longer fits on a single-layer DVD, and it appears the bootable flash media path requires a tool that runs on Windows. And the Ventura forum is not the best place for Windows support. And getting Windows Intel or Windows Arm running on an Apple silicon Mac here is a yet bigger project than you already have.

Even at the most basic level, format of the usb there is a problem. The PC can not read a drive formatted for Macs. A Mac can not write to a drive formatted for Windows. So you can not even copy a Windows file to a Windows formatted usb drive, And the PC can not read the Mac formatted drive.

zilindd5 wrote:

Hi Hoffman,

Thanks for the information.

But i just need to create a bootable Windows 11 drive on my Mac and use it to reinstall Windows 11 on my son's PC. I don't have any plan to install Windows 11 on my Mac.

There is no means to do that.

You have a PC with a corrupt install, with no installable backups, and seemingly with no recovery disks or whatever Microsoft calls those now.

You wish to use a Mac running Windows to rebuild enough to get the corrupt install going.

The version of Windows that runs on that PC is not the version of Windows that will run on the Mac—the PC is almost certainly running an Intel x86 processor, while the Mac is running an Apple silicon Arm processor.

That is, the PC is running Windows for x86, and not Windows for Arm.

The Windows for x86 downloads will not run on Mac. Not without also installing an emulator, in addition to a virtual machine, just to get this stuff booted. If it'll boot, as all this is unsupported.

And there are no versions of Windows for Arm available outside of the insider's channels, and the Windows for Arm only boots with a hypervisor, which is a hunk you'll have to acquire and install.

All of this to get something possibly working with Windows enough to build Windows installer.

Because there is no means to build a Windows installer directly from macOS.

Put differently, the Windows requirements for current Apple silicon Mac are more difficult to meet, and there's nothing like Boot Camp to get the Mac to boot Windows.

This is because Apple migrated away from Intel x86 processors to Apple silicon Arm processors.

If you want to install a hypervisor such as UTM and get Windows on x86 installed and going, have at. It'll be a project. A project undoubtedly larger than borrowing or scrounging a Windows Intel system elsewhere, and using that to recover a Windows system, too. This is well beyond Boot Camp. Also larger than getting somebody with a PC to build an installer for you.

P.S. I did contact Microsoft support team and never heard back from them for two days.

I had suggested a Microsoft Windows forum, not contacting Microsoft support. (I'm also not sure why you might have expected Microsoft to respond here. The Microsoft customers here are the hardware OEMs, and not the end users of Windows. Microsoft primarily sells Windows to the hardware vendors, and only in far smaller numbers to the end-users.)

Maybe the OEM for whichever PC is involved has some sort of a recovery download, if you can't somehow borrow a PC elsewhere.

And here is the Windows re-installation documentation:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/reinstall-windows-d8369486-3e33-7d9c-dccc-859e2b022fc7

The key phrase in there is "On a working PC...", and getting a Mac with Apple silicon to be a working PC is a project large, and one I'm not even entirely sure will work given the different processor architecture (Intel x86 versus Apple silicon Arm), and the use of a hypervisor and potentially also of an emulator.

Again, I expect scrounging a Windows Intel PC is going to be easier.

Microsoft has just announced support for booting Windows on Arm in Parallels hypervisor on Apple M1 and M1 Apple silicon Macs, but that’s more pieces and more cost than scrounging a local PC. (And you’ll still need to deal with whatever differences or oddities might or will still exist here between Intel x86-64 installer you want to create and the Windows Arm install in Mac.)

Boot Camp is not supported on your silicon (M2) Mac.

Get started with Boot Camp Assistant on Mac - Apple Support