mac mini windows

Hello zayforeal,

Boot Camp is not supported on Macs using Apple Silicon (M1 and M2). To run Windows on your Mac mini M2, you’ll need to use virtualization software such as Parallels (https://www.parallels.com/) or VMWare Fusion (https://www.vmware.com/products/fusion.html.)

You’ll also need to download a special version of Windows: Windows 11 ARM.

Current version of VMWare Fusion is fully ARM compatible for Windows ARM64 VMs.

I installed Windows 11 into a VMWare Fusion VM using the standard Windows 11 installer. However, post install, you need to manually install the "Windows App Store" in order to get the standard Windows apps. This was quite a while ago go perhaps MS has improved the installer so that additional step was not necessary.

Also Note, if you are getting Windows so that you can attach Windows specific hardware, the hardware must have drivers for the ARM 64 platform, which many companies may not have available or even plan to have available as the Windows ARM64 platforms are currently small in number.

Additionally, if you want Windows 10, you would need a developer account and get the Windows 10 Preview version if that even still exists now that Windows 11 is out. Any Windows OS prior to Windows 10 will not work at all.

Currently only ARM version of Windows is somewhat supported when running it on Parallels (and VMware?) VM on silicon M1/M2 Macs. Bootcamp is for Intel Macs.

If you're planning to run Wintel applications using Windows for ARM, you'll be depending on Microsoft Windows to do the Intel emulation / translation. I do not know how well Microsoft's code (for Windows/ARM) stacks up against Rosetta 2 (for macOS/ARM), performance-wise. However, Microsoft's and Apple's solutions have the same basic limitation when it comes to running Intel code (like Windows drivers or macOS kernel extensions) in system space. Namely: they can't. The ability to run Intel code on an ARM machine is for user-land code only.

Microsoft Support – Windows Arm-based PCs FAQ

Microsoft Support – Options for using Windows 11 with Mac® computers with Apple® M1® and M2™ chips

Parallels – Knowledge Base – About Parallels Desktop for Mac with Apple silicon

Parallels – Knowledge Base – Parallels Desktop for Mac with Apple silicon limitations