key to press when installing windows on mac

I chose “Windows 8.1” from the menu, as it’s the most recent version of Windows. Didn’t you hear the part about the Windows 10 Technical Preview being very early experimental software? You don’t want to lose all your valuable documents and family videos if Microsoft’s OS hiccups.Īt the VirtualBox launch screen, you’ll be asked to choose which operating system to install.

Whatever you do, back up your Mac’s data first. Any Mac released in recent memory should be able to run Windows 10 just fine.

Mine was pretty issue-free: I installed Windows 10 on a late 2014 MacBook Pro with a 2.6GHz i5 processor and 8GB of RAM. The Windows 10 Start menu is back, and you can have it on your Mac.Īs with any pre-release software, one person’s experience may vary with another’s. If something goes wrong on a virtual machine, it won’t affect your hardware or OS X installation-you can just wipe it and start over. We’ll be using the open-source VirtualBox from Oracle, though Parallels Desktop is a popular alternative (it costs about $80). A virtual is the route we recommend, given that the Windows 10 Technical Preview is still in very early form, with the occasional rough edge or bugginess popping up.

Get Chrome or your other favorite apps on Windows 10.Īnother option lets you run Windows as a virtual machine inside an OS X program.

When finished you can boot directly into Windows, essentially transforming your Mac into a full-blown Windows PC. The first is to install Windows on a separate partition of your hard drive using Apple’s built-in Boot Camp software.

Key to press when installing windows on mac