MacBook M4 Pro Bootcamp and Win 10

I know this question has been asked several times but reading some of these leaves me a little confused. I need to migrate Win 10 / Bootcamp from a MacBook Pro 2018/ Mojave to a MBP M4 Pro / Sequoia as I need the Apps in Win 10. Is Boot Camp the best route and reinstall Win 10 or would I be better taking the plunge by buying VM ware or its equivalent and hopefully install Win 10 when I can find the key.


MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 15.3

Posted on Feb 23, 2025 7:22 AM

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Feb 23, 2025 11:13 AM in response to Crag_rat

There is no Boot Camp on M-series Macs. It doesn't exist and you can't run Windows natively on Apple Silicon at all.


The only way you can run Windows on Apple Silicon is Windows 11 ARM in Parallels Desktop (or another VM product that supports Windows 11 ARM, but Parallels seems to still be the best for support).


Windows keys should transfer between WIndows 10 and 11...but the steps you will need to go through to "migrate" from a Windows 10 Boot Camp install to a WIndows 11 ARM VM install probably needs additional help from Windows Tech Support, to be honest.

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Feb 23, 2025 11:35 AM in response to Crag_rat

You’re moving from Microsoft Windows 10 on x86-64 Intel processors, to Windows 11 on ARM for Arm64 processors.


Both upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and migrating from x86-64 to Arm64 architectures add to the considerations here.


Here is what Microsoft supports with Apple silicon Arm64 processors:


https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/options-for-using-windows-11-with-mac-computers-with-apple-m1-m2-and-m3-chips-cd15fd62-9b34-4b78-b0bc-121baa3c568c


As correctly stated in the reply above, Microsoft expects you to be using a virtual machine (e.g. Parallels) and not native boot (e.g. Boot Camp). Or Microsoft expects you to use Windows hosted on Azure or otherwise, of course.


Windows 11 on ARM includes an emulator for running Windows apps built for x86-64, as well.


Windows 10 or Windows 11 built for x86-64 will not run on Apple silicon. Not without emulating the whole thing, and you probably don’t want the effort and overhead in emulating all of Windows.

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Feb 23, 2025 12:36 PM in response to MrHoffman

Thank you g_wolfman & MrHoffman for your replies. Over the last year or so I have been totaly immersed in other things rather than Apple tech and I appreciate your comments - I will dig deep and buy Parallels / Win 11, this seems the most pain free path.

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MacBook M4 Pro Bootcamp and Win 10

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