Installing Windows 10 without macOS installed

[LudwigZildjian]

Hello, a customer asked me to install Windows 10 on a 2013 MacBook Pro. They don’t want macOS, or at least don’t need it, and I wanted to take any confusion out for them and not put macOS on there if they’re not going to use it. I’m trouble getting Windows installed, I can’t get past “setup is starting”. I even went as far as to try getting it going on another drive with macOS Catalina via boot camp, and similar experience. It would get a step further to “getting ready” to install, after I made my selections on which version of Windows I’m installing, etc.

What am I missing? I haven’t done one of these Windows on a Mac installs in what feels like ages, so I’m at a loss.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

It may be simplest to install a minimal version of macOS, perhaps 10.15 Mojave, use that to install Windows via Bootcamp, and then select Windows as the first OS to boot in Preferences.

The alternative might be to make a USB Windows installer (google it), boot into Recovery mode and reformat the drive as NTFS, then boot off the Win Installer USB and see if that works.

 

[mdgm]

You'd want to identify the partitions to make sure you format the right one from the USB Windows installer, though it should be obvious which one is biggest.

A good reason to at least temporarily put Mac OS X 10.14 Mojave (or newer) with all security updates installed (if not done already) is to get the Boot ROM updated to the latest. If the stock drive fails the up to date Boot ROM will provide better support for using 3rd party NVMe SSDs.