Bootcamp Windows Support won't install

[Kryten]

I've set up an external Bootcamp SSD with Win 10 and the Support drivers won't install. They are the right drivers throught Assistant but it just hangs when installing. Can someone advise please where the individual files go, especially for sound, wireless keyboard and graphics? And when I choose Shut down or Restart, it just hangs again. It runs fine as Windows except for this.

EDIT: Sorry forgot: iMac 2020 Big Sur.

 

[harryb2448]

BootCamp does not work on silicon Macs. Can't recall what Mac you have now.

Here’s what’s happening to Boot Camp amid the Apple silicon transition

Virtualization might not be enough for gamers, so what about Windows?

arstechnica.com

 

[Kryten]

I bought it a couple of weeks ago from Apple, iMac 27" 3.8Ghz, i7. Is it ready for the bin already Doctor?

 

[MacInWin]

If it's an i7, it should run Windows. How about posting a screenshot of the panel that opens when you click on the , upper left, then About This Mac, so we can see what you have?

 

[Kryten]

Thanks Jake. As I said in my first post, it does run Win10, no problem. But in the final stage of installing Windows Support from Bootcamp, it just hangs when I click setup.exe. which means I get no sound and everything else is not optimised.

EDIT: When I say hang, it begins to install with the usual green progress bar but gets no further than around 5cm.

 

[MacInWin]

OK, I'm not a BootCamp expert, but we have several here, so someone will come along with a suggestion. About all I can suggest is to let it run longer than you have. It could take some time to finish.

 

[chscag]

I've set up an external Bootcamp SSD with Win 10 and the Support drivers won't install.

That's your problem.

You might remember we stated previously that setting up Boot Camp on an external drive was not supported by Microsoft or Apple. We also said that it can be done but required a work around.

The Apple provided Boot Camp drivers likewise are not supported for your setup. The best you can do is to try and track down drivers for your hardware separate from what Apple normally provides.

 

[Kryten]

Thank you gentlemen. Whilst I appreciate the wisdom of what you say, there are workarounds using Parallels or VMware Fusion Player and WinToUSB. Both of these allow for an installation of Windows on external drives, then installing Win 10 onto that. There are plenty of tutorials on YT. It does work and the Windows Support should work. The reason I wanted to install it on an external is because I have 2 spare SSDs lying around and I didn't want to take up 200Gb or so off my iMac's internal.
Curiously enough the first time I tried this procedure it worked perfectly including the installation of the Bootcamp drivers but the iMac when Option restarted didn't see it as a bootable drive. Now it does except Win Support won't install.
I will try the suggestion of leaving it longer, failing that revert to an internal partition.
Thanks for you responses gentlemen.

 

[MacInWin]

Thank you gentlemen. Whilst I appreciate the wisdom of what you say, there are workarounds using Parallels or VMware Fusion Player and WinToUSB. Both of these allow for an installation of Windows on external drives, then installing Win 10 onto that. There are plenty of tutorials on YT. It does work and the Windows Support should work. The reason I wanted to install it on an external is because I have 2 spare SSDs lying around and I didn't want to take up 200Gb or so off my iMac's internal.
Curiously enough the first time I tried this procedure it worked perfectly including the installation of the Bootcamp drivers but the iMac when Option restarted didn't see it as a bootable drive. Now it does except Win Support won't install.
I will try the suggestion of leaving it longer, failing that revert to an internal partition.
Thanks for you responses gentlemen.

Ah, but a VMWare or Parallels approach is entirely different that what you described. In those two options, a virtual machine is created in a file or set of files that can be stored anywhere. But when you launch the hosting application and then boot that virtual machine, Windows thinks it's booting from an internal drive and puts up no fuss about it. The emulator "hides" the fact that it's running inside a macOS window from the Windows installation. But BootCamp actually boots from the drive itself, with no emulator and no macOS running at all, so the full rules from MS apply. And MS doesn't want Windows booted from external drives to reduce piracy. I know Win10 in a VM can be stored on an external drive, I have one set up that way myself under Parallels.

So, if you want to use those SSDs with Parallels or VMWare, you can do so just fine. But booting directly into Windows from them without the virtual emulator is going to take more trickery, as chscag said. And getting it done is one thing, keeping it going is another story.

 

[Kryten]

A clear explanation thank you. I will try that approach as I'm also uncomfortable having to force shut down my Mac just because Win 10 won't Switch off or Restart. Thank you for taking the time to type all that out sir.

 

[MacInWin]

Thank you for taking the time to type all that out sir.

Most useful high school class I ever took--typing! I'm actually faster at typing now (at 75) than I was at 17. Fingers don't forget...

 

[Kryten]

Ha ha, I'm not far behind you at 72. But I've found my typing is becoming dyslexic....! I seem to add some spurious characters sometimes and I don't seem to be anywhere near as accurate as I used to be. Plus my spelling that always presented no problems at all, now I keep having to look words up!

 

[MacInWin]

Did you hear about the insomniac, agnostic, dyslexic who laid awake at night wondering if there was a dog?

Seriously, I do occasionally reverse letters, but usually it's because I'm overrunning my typical typing speed. And I have to watch for spellcheck making changes when that happens because invariably spellcheck picks the wrong replacement.

 

[harryb2448]

Let me tell you youngsters it is all downhill from where you are. My greatest problem with life is that they do not make mirrors like they used to!!

 

[Kryten]

Oscar Wilde is absolutely correct about youth...

 

[Kryten]

That's your problem.

As an update to this gentlemen, I also put a post on here about games running so slowly, frame by frame and I had a response suggesting I go to amd.com and dowload the correct driver for the GPU. I booted into Bootcamp first and suddenly I had sound which I didn't have before, so I installed the AMD driver and that worked. There a couple of other small downloads to get some Steam games working after a message saying MSVCP140.dll and VCRUNTIME.dll were missing so I re booted and everything worked. I was then able to install the Apple Windows Support drivers for keyboard etc... but everygame so far works perfectly. But oddly Windows thinks I have 2 monitors connected now which I've corrected using Settings, but the second monitor is still 'seen' to be there by the system. This peculiarity was present before and after the Apple Support install. But other than that it's good. And I have a lot more space on the external SSD.