Begging for Bootcamp Help

[Slydude]

I have a program that I need to run for work. The program runs fine in a virtual machine. But may wife would love for me to set up Bootcamp in case her several-year-old PC dies before we can budget for a replacement. I've hat a devil of a time with Bootcamp in the last few days. Perhaps some here has answers before I spend any more time down the proverbial rabbit hole.

All previous attempts at installation have been on a late 2015 iMac with a fusion drive. I have downloaded a legit Windows 10 iso and created a bootable USB stick. Over the last three days or so I've made numerous attempts to complete the installation with various errors. Here's the rundown:

1. If I create a partition using the Bootcamp Setup Assistant everything is fine until the Windows installer asks me to select where to install the software. At that point the Windows installer essentially says it can't find/recognize the partition.

2. If I create a Fat 32 partition manually and then boot the Mac from the bootable Win 10 installer the process begins and I can select the partition I created. The Win installer formats the partition to NTFS and will sometimes tell me that it needs to create an additional partition which is only a few GB). At the point where it should copy files to the Bootcamp partition the installer then says it cannot reboot the Mac.

At some point in the last several attempts I ended up with a Bootcamp partition and one or two smaller partitions. The only way to solve the problem was to completely formate the startup drive and restore from a Time Machine backup.

 

[chscag]

There are lots of other folks who have struggled trying to get Boot Camp to work with a Fusion drive. Sounds like you're doing everything correctly but it appears the Windows installer is getting confused over where to install. The Windows installer is probably seeing the Fusion drive as two drives.

Solve your problem real easy..... buy your wife an inexpensive PC and don't mess with Boot Camp.

 

[ferrarr]

Are you still running the High Sierra Beta?

 

[Slydude]

Sorry I thought I should have included that info. One of the first things I did was go back to the regular version of High Sierra and ditch the beta. With the possible exception of the first attempt everything has been with High Sierra and not the beta.

I have considered setting up a VM and then transferring that to the Bootcamp partition. I haven't tried that yet but from what I've read the odds of that working have been mixed.

@Charlie I thought about that but some of the games she runs are not going to run well on the bargain basement PCs. Now if I had some of that'll money you Texans are hiding that would be a different matter altogether.

 

[chscag]

@Charlie I thought about that but some of the games she runs are not going to run well on the bargain basement PCs. Now if I had some of that'll money you Texans are hiding that would be a different matter altogether.

LOL, I took a close look at the new tax law and did some computing for 2018. Sure wish I could find some of that hidden money.

Seriously, I've seen some real nice PCs that were not expensive. Do you belong to Sam's Club or Costco? I looked at several well loaded HP notebooks that were under $700. Some of them had plenty of memory, large storage, and the latest Intel GPU. Of course if you go for a SSD, discrete graphics, and more memory, the prices are comparable to a MacBook Pro.