Partitioning a Mac hard drive

[John Emmas]

the only thing I did differently from you is that I didn't resize the Windows partition. I just accepted the default size created by Boot Camp (96GB), It's getting late here (UK time) and I'm working tomorrow but I'll give that a try at the weekend.

Nope - resizing the Boot Camp partition didn't help either - but having upgraded Mojave to 10.14.3 I've noticed something which might be significant..... at the exact point where it fails, I see a message saying that Boot Camp needs to install a Helper app (and asking for my password). However - the crash occurs before I ever have time to enter it. This was also happening with 10.14.2 but I didn't notice how predictable the timing is (Boot Camp fails within about half a second of that message box appearing).

Maybe this is a dumb question - but do I need to be logged in with Administrator priveleges in order to run Boot Camp successfully? (and if so, how do I do that?)

 

[John Emmas]

Woohoo..! I've managed to make this work by creating a USB install stick and booting up from that I've no idea why ISO's don't work for me but at least I can dual-boot now between OS-X and Windows !!

One last question.... when I boot into OS-X, it mounts the Windows volume as a drive on my desktop. Is there any way I can ask it to ignore the Windows volume?

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Glad you have it working now.

You can get the drive off your desktop wit

Finder > Preferences > General Then untick the box next to the item you want to remove from the desktop.

 

[John Emmas]

That worked thanks - but I've a feeling I spoke too soon regarding Windows generally

Windows 10 boots up okay but it can't see the Mac's wifi hardware. Is there any way I can find out what 'make' of wifi controller I have? Hopefully I'll then be able to find a Win10 driver for it.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Control Panel > Hardware and Sound >Devices and Printers > Device manager then look under network adapters.

For my installation the drivers were set up automatically, I just had to select the SSID and fill in the password.

 

[John Emmas]

Unfortunately there's a bit of a Catch-22 here. The only network adaptors present are Ethernet and WAN Miniport (which presumably isn't the same as Wifi). However - under 'Other devices' there's a whole bunch of devices (including a network adaptor) which all show up as "Manufacturer Unknown". So I'm guessing Windows doesn't know where to obtain their drivers. The Catch-22 is that I can't update any of them because without wifi, I can't access the internet!!

Back in the days when I tried Boot Camp, it started off by downloading a whole bunch of drivers (presumably for all those 'Mac-specific' bits of hardware). So without Boot Camp, none of them will work.

Suppose I boot into OS-X... is there anywhere where I can find the manufacturer for the wifi hardware?

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Click on the apple icon in the top left corner click About this Mac then click System Report. then from the list on the left pick the item you need info on.

 

[John Emmas]

Thanks Lufbrarunner - the Wi-fi hardware shows up as AirPort Extreme and the manufacturer is Broadcom. Do you know if Apple has a Support dept who'd maybe provide the drivers? The Mac Pro is a legitimate Apple product so hopefully they'd help.....

 

[honestone]

Excuse me for asking a "dumb" question, but is your MacPro connected to a modem/router? Or are you actually connecting to the internet via WiFi, versus Ethernet? For my late 2012 Mac Mini, it also has an Airport Extreme card inside, but I am connecting the machine to the internet via Ethernet, and it is connected to my Netgear Router, which is then connected to my Netgear Telephony Modem.

For my mid 2017 MacBook Air, the internet connection is via WiFi, on my "in home" network, but the base station for that connectivity is my router/modem hardware. Do you have a base station?

I did google "Airport Extreme Drivers for Windows", and got a whole bunch of "hits":

https://www.google.com/search?q=Air...ome..69i57.14102j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

One would think the Windows setup process would be seem less for what you are doing.

 

[John Emmas]

I connect to the internet via a Wi-Fi router in a different room (there's no landline socket in the room where I have my computers). I've done this for years and it's never caused any problems. The limiting factor is the broadband speed itself (about 11Mb/sec) so connecting via Wi-Fi is no slower than Ethernet. It's only slower if I need to transfer files between my various computers (but even then it's perfectly usable).

BTW - late yesterday I visited my local Apple Store and I've discovered that Boot Camp Assistant can copy the relevant drivers to a USB stick for me (together with a Setup.exe file apparently). It's under Action->Download Windows Support Software. Once it's all on the USB stick, I'm told I can then install all the drivers from within Windows (I'm planning to give that a try this morning....)

 

[John Emmas]

Whew! After literally DAYS of torture I've finally got my Mac dual-booting at last. Many thanks to honestone and lufbrarunner for all your help and perseverance. I now have all my drivers installed - and stuff which wasn't previously working (like my speaker sounds / internet access etc) is finally working!. Here's what I think might possibly have been going wrong....

Boot Camp Assistant seems to create 2 x new partitions. The main Windows one (called BOOTCAMP) was being created at 96GB in my particular case. And there was a much smaller partition which (I think) was called something like EFI Boot. I didn't notice its size but it was just a tiny sliver compared to the BOOTCAMP partition - so I'm guessing maybe 1 or 2 gigabytes. I think that's possibly the one which holds all the Windows drivers temporarily.

But having now downloaded the drivers onto a USB stick, I can see that they total around 2.7GB. So maybe that temporary partition just wasn't big enough to hold everything? That's only a guess - but if anyone here's got an in-road into Apple, maybe they could flag this up, just in case I'm right.

 

[honestone]

Raise the flag! Congratulations! You definitely would not give up!

Just one more comment: unless you are "tapping" into someone else's WiFi, for you to use WiFi in your place, there still needs to be a router/modem somewhere in your residence. Our oldest son lives in London, and he has a modem connected to his TV. Both him and our daughter-in-law connect to the internet through WiFi (I also do when we visit, with my MacBook Air), but the modem is the essential piece needed for internet connectivity (he might have a "combo" modem/router, whereas I have separate devices). The reason why I have a Telephony Modem is that I still have Landline phone service though my ISP (XFinity), and there is a telephone "port" near my Mac Mini (also other places in our town home). But if we did not have that service, there is still the requirement for the internet connection, and there is also a connection for internet (again, in many places within our town home) near my Mac Mini, and thus I use Ethernet connectivity there.

And yes, what you say about file transfers is accurate. I actually have a pretty fast internet "tier" from XFinity, so transfers with my MacBook Air via WiFi are OK. Sometimes though, I will download a large file with the Mac Mini, then copy it to a USB Flash Drive, plug it into the MacBook Air, and copy the file from the flash drive. Works fine.

So, I would think you have some kind of "base station" (modem. modem/router, etc.) somewhere.