New Blog: Mac Mini saves the day — for a Windows user

Mac Mini saves the day — for a Windows user

I live in a house divided. I use both Mac and Windows, but my spouse is strictly Windows. Recently, I upgraded her aging PC with a new video card for better Windows 10 support. All seem to go well — until I realized I’d booted the system but not plugged… Read More
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Thanks Tracey. I didn't know Windows could be run that way. Nice info for those emergency situations like yours.

I was surprised when I put a drive, from an HP laptop, in my MBP and it booted into Windows 10 and would not allow me to get into Recovery to format it. I had to pull it and format it externally.

It's more of a Windows 10 saves the day, than Mac Mini. The reason this worked is that the Macs nowadays are basically PCs with Apple logo*.

Windows OS on PCs is hardware agnostic, as long as the CPU is Intel or AMD. The OS scans for hardware changes at boot time and downloads and installs drivers if required. In previous versions of Windows it worked just fine with internal drives, but it did not allow booting from removable (USB, eSATA, etc.) media. Windows 10 added the booting from removable media feature.

My Windows 7 rig had a faulty motherboard after three or four years. It did not make sense trying to get the same motherboard, not to mention that it was hard to find one, and might as well updated the CPU and memory. The OS booted up just fine after the hardware upgrade, detected and installed drivers and back in business after couple of reboots. I still have this rig, by now the OS installation is about seven years old.

*-Macs with Intel motherboards and CPUs.

Note that Tracey mentions that the Windows 10 Enterprise edition can be run from external media:

The temporary setup indicated that it was running under Microsoft’s Windows To Go technology (more info), which I understood only worked with the Enterprise version of Windows.

Click to expand...

I don't believe MS allows the standard version of Windows 10 to be booted from external media, although I might be wrong.....

chscag said:

Note that Tracey mentions that the Windows 10 Enterprise edition can be run from external media:

I don't believe MS allows the standard version of Windows 10 to be booted from external media, although I might be wrong.....

Click to expand...

Actually...

Windows To Go had first became available for Windows 8.0 and later versions. And yes, Microsoft does state that the To Go feature is only available in the Enterprise edition. In reality, there's no software limitation from stopping someone from using any other edition of Windows, including the home edition, for installing the OS on a USB stick.

There's actually no difference in the internal and external drive installation of these Windows versions, it's the same ISO installation source. Hence the reason why Tracy had been able to boot from the formerly internal drive, when it had been connected externally to the Mac Mini. I also doubt that the Windows 10 in question was the Enterprise version. It's not impossible, but I doubt based on the content of the blog...

I am running Windows 8.1 on a removable, 1TB SSD drive in the removable drive bay. It has a USB3 connection as well, albeit I have not tried connecting it to the USB3 port on the same PC, or on my MacBook. Now you gave me some ideas, time permitting it'll be tested with Windows 8.1...