Boot Camp Assistant Never Boots Into Windows 10 Installer

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Level 1

123 points

Boot Camp Assistant Never Boots Into Windows 10 Installer

I've found it impossible to install Windows 10 onto my MacBook Pro 11,3 (Late 2013) 15" with macOS 10.12.6, 32 GB RAM. I've set aside a partition of 32 GB specifically for Boot Camp to use to install Windows 10. I have gotten far enough in the bug ridden Boot Camp Assistant app to where the "WININSTALL" USB boot drive is finished. I'm using a 32 GB SD USB thumb drive from SanDisk. I get as far as Boot Camp Assistant asking for my Admin password, I provide it, then Boot Camp stops with the following message:

"The Windows support software has been saved.

Install this Windows support software after installing Windows.

Quit"

Quit? No, it's supposed to instead boot the Windows 10 installer, with added Boot Camp files, which I see are indeed there on the USB boot drive. The Windows 10 installation process is then supposed to proceed. It's NOT supposed to stop and leave me at "Quit".

I've suffered through Apple's, as usual, buggy Feedback Assistant and reported this bug to Apple. In the meantime, I'm at a dead end with no indication of errors by Boot Camp Assistant and no options to go any further with the installer boot and installation process as intended. Dead end.

Have others run into the dead end bug? Any suggestions? There is no documentation of this problem on the Internet that I can find. Apple has none. The various third party documentations of the Boot Camp Assistant process have none. I have checked several times to verify that my MBP is indeed Boot Camp Windows 10 capable. That's not the issue.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013), macOS Sierra (10.12.1), 16 GB RAM

Posted on May 9, 2018 10:24 PM

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Answer 1

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Derek Currie Author

Level 1

123 points

May 11, 2018 12:13 PM in response to Loner T

Thank you. Yet another pitfall, yet another reason to not upgrade to High Sierra!

I have been 100% successful as of last night. I'll skip over the tests I went through. What solved the situation was to get rid of the Windows partition I had made myself. I let Boot Camp Assistant get rid of it, which became the third checkbox during the tribulation. I then had one united boot partition. Restarting Boot Camp Assistant, the third checkbox now changed to provide the ability to create a Boot Camp partition. That went through a couple failures as I attempted to repair the boot partition. In the repair partition I ran Disk Utility, which did not solve entirely the problem. Then I booted to my repair SD card and used DiskWarrior, which did solve the problem. It's disappointing to find that Disk Utility is not enough to fully repair Mac drive partitions, even according to Apple's own Boot Camp Assistant.

At that point, everything went smoothly as per the documentation. I didn't need to remake my installation USB Flash Drive. It worked fine. The third checkbox had kept changing according to what was going on with my boot partition until everything was as it required in order to work properly. In summary, Boot Camp Assistant demands, without any feedback to the user, that it create its own Boot Camp partition out of the boot partition. My downfall was thinking I could keep the second Mac partition I'd used for years for repair purposes (now replaced by my bootable SD card) and DIY it into a Boot Camp partition. No I could not. I wish this fact was definitively documented by Apple. Hopefully, in the future someone will run into this discussion and be able to avoid having to do their own troubleshooting.

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Answer 2

Derek Currie Author

Level 1

123 points

May 10, 2018 7:03 AM in response to Loner T

Thank you for replying Loner T. The Flash drive is USB2. From what I can tell, it was happily set up to boot the Windows 10 installer along with Boot Camp additions.

My current tack seems to address the likely cause: I neglected to reinitialize the 32GB partition I have set aside for Boot Camp to the required compatible Windows format. In my research travels I recall reading that it had to be pre-formatted to one of the Windows formats, undoubtedly exFAT. Doing that then starting from scratch will be my assignment for the day. I'm making sure I get fruitful work done before I dive back into the potential mayhem.

At Level 8, you're clearly a great benefit around here!

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Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

May 12, 2018 3:55 PM in response to Derek Currie

Your 2013 Mac should have three check boxes in BC Assistant - Create, Download and Install. Create+Download let you create a bootable USB2 Windows installer. Install allows you to partition the disk and install Windows.

Your Mac supports both legacy BIOS and EFI boot installations. The default is BIOS, but it requires a Hybrid MBR to overlay the GPT. You can check if you have it, by checking the output of

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

A single entry is for EFI, while more than one (typically four) indicates the BIOS mode. High Sierra assumes EFI and will not create the MBR, so it is a bit of Russian Roulette scenario on your model.

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Answer 4

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

May 12, 2018 3:55 PM in response to Derek Currie

Excellent.

On Macs which require a MBR to support BIOS, the limitation is the number of entries and 32-bti integer used for MBRs. This is why BCA should be used. Snow Leopard (10.6) and prior macOS versions did not have a Recovery HD, so an extra partition was possible, even if a MBR was used. Later macOS versions took away that possibility.

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Answer 5

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

May 10, 2018 5:51 AM in response to Derek Currie

If you use any external device except a USB2 Flash drive, your road to Windows/BC is fraught with pitfalls. 😉

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Boot Camp Assistant Never Boots Into Windows 10 Installer

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