Need some help setting up ISTA on a MacBook Pro with Parallels

[grey.hound]

All of you Mac & Windows experts here: Stop pretending — or believing — you know what you're talking about. You don't.

If you've got an Intel or later Mac — preferably a laptop, for this scenario —  (2006 to present, including M series) you've got a Windows machine. Do not bother fucking around with BootCamp for installing Windows — you don't need it, and you don't want it. It's awful. See a simpler, better solution below. (You will use BootCamp Assistant.app on the Mac to download the Windows Support Package [drivers] from Apple, but other than that you won't be using BootCamp).

Parallels is also a bloated, suffocating pain in the (expensive) ass — now a subscription service (unless you want to fool around with torrents, which practice has its own set of issues). VMWare Fusion is cleaner and simpler — but neither of these VM solutions is the same as having a dedicated Win machine.

One can easily — and I mean easily — create a portable Windows 10 bootable external drive that will boot in 10 seconds from any Mac mentioned above. It works beautifully, with all system resources available to the Windows OS.

You will need:
 — an external SSD (I used a recycled internal SSD from a 2011 MacBook Air that was upgraded with a larger / faster SSD, which came with a dedicated external USB slim housing for the old SSD. See “Transcend Jet Drive” for MacBook Air / MacBook Pro on Amazon). The how-to article linked to below suggests a Samsung external SSD. I have used these as well for this and other similar applications.
 — a Mac as mentioned above, with any version of OS X (now ‘macOS’) installed
 — a copy of the Win 10 ISO installer from the Microsoft website
 — a copy of ‘WinToUSB’ (free for installing Win 10 ‘Home’ version)
 — a free trial version of VMWare Fusion *or a Windows machine for the one-time task of using WinToUSB to create your bootable Windows external SSD. You can delete the VMWare VM after you complete this task, if you wish.

Here's a good walk-through, with both video and text — and links for the resources you need.
[URL="https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/14/install-windows-mac-external-ssd-drive-boot-camp-2020-video/"]

That's how a tutorial should be written and presented.

[nick325xit 5spd]

Originally Posted by grey.hound

All of you Mac & Windows experts here: Stop pretending — or believing — you know what you're talking about. You don't.

If you've got an Intel or later Mac — preferably a laptop, for this scenario —  (2006 to present, including M series) you've got a Windows machine. Do not bother fucking around with BootCamp for installing Windows — you don't need it, and you don't want it. It's awful. See a simpler, better solution below. (You will use BootCamp Assistant.app on the Mac to download the Windows Support Package [drivers] from Apple, but other than that you won't be using BootCamp).

Parallels is also a bloated, suffocating pain in the (expensive) ass — now a subscription service (unless you want to fool around with torrents, which practice has its own set of issues). VMWare Fusion is cleaner and simpler — but neither of these VM solutions is the same as having a dedicated Win machine.

One can easily — and I mean easily — create a portable Windows 10 bootable external drive that will boot in 10 seconds from any Mac mentioned above. It works beautifully, with all system resources available to the Windows OS.

You will need:
 — an external SSD (I used a recycled internal SSD from a 2011 MacBook Air that was upgraded with a larger / faster SSD, which came with a dedicated external USB slim housing for the old SSD. See “Transcend Jet Drive” for MacBook Air / MacBook Pro on Amazon). The how-to article linked to below suggests a Samsung external SSD. I have used these as well for this and other similar applications.
 — a Mac as mentioned above, with any version of OS X (now ‘macOS’) installed
 — a copy of the Win 10 ISO installer from the Microsoft website
 — a copy of ‘WinToUSB’ (free for installing Win 10 ‘Home’ version)
 — a free trial version of VMWare Fusion *or a Windows machine for the one-time task of using WinToUSB to create your bootable Windows external SSD. You can delete the VMWare VM after you complete this task, if you wish.

Here's a good walk-through, with both video and text — and links for the resources you need.
[URL="https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/14/install-windows-mac-external-ssd-drive-boot-camp-2020-video/"]

That's how a tutorial should be written and presented.

You're forgetting a bunch of key factors:
1) Using your daily driver laptop in the garage is often a terrible idea.*
2) Old ThinkPads are really cheap.
3) Rebooting your main machine is actually extremely annoying. I'm entirely willing to spend an extra, what, $100 to never have to do this.
4) You might have heard about this, but Apple shitcanned Intel. There are somewhat sketchy and not long term dependable workarounds to get access to ARM Windows that might emulate intel in a usable fashion, but that's not at all guaranteed.

You will note that I agree with you that VMs suck.

*And if your daily driver is a recent Intel Mac with one of the butterfly keyboards, it's even worse.

[Peezen]

Well I have to say that all of that sounds pretty neat.

Right now I have an old Asus Aspire laptop with an i5 in it and a 128SSD drive with 8gb of ram. I haven’t used it on the X5 yet, but I have stripped it bare with win7 installed and nothing but Rheingold installed.

I’ll get out to the X5 soon and see if it all works, looks like mike’s easy tools may not have been able install the interface drivers. Windows discovered and installed drivers on its own easily enough though.

I do have a permanent parallels serial, but decided to use an old laptop after reading some advice in here. It’s my work machine so no need to get it dirty lol

[grey.hound]

Originally Posted by nick325xit 5spd

You're forgetting a bunch of key factors:
1) Using your daily driver laptop in the garage is often a terrible idea.*
2) Old ThinkPads are really cheap.
3) Rebooting your main machine is actually extremely annoying. I'm entirely willing to spend an extra, what, $100 to never have to do this.
4) You might have heard about this, but Apple shitcanned Intel. There are somewhat sketchy and not long term dependable workarounds to get access to ARM Windows that might emulate intel in a usable fashion, but that's not at all guaranteed.

You will note that I agree with you that VMs suck.

*And if your daily driver is a recent Intel Mac with one of the butterfly keyboards, it's even worse.

I'm not forgetting anything. You're just repeating yourself and reaffirming your ignorance. And I don't doubt that rebooting ‘your main machine’ is extremely annoying, nor that using 'your daily driver' in your garage is a terrible idea.

I have a couple of nice older MacBook Pros for sale for <$100, if you're interested. You could even just install Windows on the internal drive, take it to your garage, plug it in, boot it up, and never restart or shut it down. It will look good on your workbench, especially at night with all the lights off and the lid open, and that mesmerizing Apple logo. I ask only that if you buy one of these machines, you will take care of it. I can only imagine how you treat your old Thinkpad.

There are no more Apple laptops with the butterfly keyboard, Intel or otherwise. For others reading this who don't know what that means: In late 2015, Apple — in its obsession with shaving a few additional microns of thickness from its laptops — introduced a new keyboard mechanism that achieved that goal, but was an utter piece of shit otherwise. And as is Tim Cook's wont, they remained in denial regarding this piece of shit, claiming that only a few of its customers were having problems. That was a lie. In late 2019, Apple — without admitting anything about said piece of shit keyboard — reverted to the old “scissor” key mechanism, which is now standard in all Apple laptops.
So — if you're looking for a used Apple laptop: look for an early 2015 A1502 — the last good laptop Apple made until late 2019, when they switched back to the old design keyboard. Everything in between is butterfly garbage. Some of you will argue that they're all garbage. I refer you back to the first line of my original post in this thread.

[c-bass]

Originally Posted by grey.hound

All of you Mac & Windows experts here: Stop pretending — or believing — you know what you're talking about. You don't.


That's how a tutorial should be written and presented.

Bwahahahahahahhahahahah

Welcome to the board "expert"

[EODguy]

Originally Posted by c-bass

Bwahahahahahahhahahahah



Welcome to the board "expert"

So the new guy with 2 posts remembers everything?

If he keeps up that attitude he'll have to remember what it wss like before he got his nose broken...

Sent from my SM-A730F using Tapatalk