Windows on a mac mini

[Mr Kleen]

My wife needs a new PC and I have a Mac Mini 6,1 gathering dust so now I have a project! It has an SSD that's too small to run a Bootcamp dual boot setup, so I'm going bare metal on this. If anyone has any tips or good references, please post them up.

Danke!

Mac Mini 6,1
i5 dual core 2.5GHz
4GB RAM
120GB SSD

[ElZorro]

I hear BeOS runs great on those.

[drwrx]

I don't have any experience at this, but am fascinated by the prospect. Keep us appraised. If you don't want to pull the internal, you could use an external SSD as the boot disc. I know the Mac OS allows this, though you may have to go thunderbolt / firewire though. I can't speak to the Windows side though.

[zaxrex]

Sound like a question for Super Sandy!

[Sabre]

I hear BeOS runs great on those.

You mean Haiku OS now? I actually have it dual booting with my FreeBSD box, lol.

I wouldn't think that getting it booting off of that machine would be too difficult. You might have to load the driver for the HD controller during setup is all.... finding that might be interesting, lol.

[complacent]

i think apple offers a driver pack download for windows. it's been a while since i've tried.

[Mr Kleen]

I could use Bootcamp but don't want to pay the overhead for an OS that will never be used. Right now she's using my old unibody Macbook that's Bootcamp dual booting. It has some issues from time to time, that's my main motivation for going Windows only with this one.

Going to work on it over the weekend, will update the thread then.

[zaxrex]

Well, we just had a box of 10 of these show up yesterday. Made me think of your project.
http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

[Mr Kleen]

If it were a Mac Pro I'd go virtual. :-\

[Mr Kleen]

Picked up a Win10 license. If it doesn't work with the Mini I'll still need it for another build. Going to try to load it sometime this week. I know sound drivers seem to be the biggest sticking point. Does she really need sound on her work PC?

[ElZorro]

If you have problems with them, find a USB sound card that is Win10 compatible. Easy.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control ... details&Q=

[Mr Kleen]

I did a full Time Machine backup to the NAS and jumped in with both feet. Bought a Win10 license (if the Mac Mini didn't work I was going to build a NUC and would need the license anyway) and made a USB install device with the ISO. I downloaded all the BootCamp files before I ran the Win10 install and reformatted the drive.

I'm posting this from the Mac Mini as it does it's second round of Windows updates! I was able to get the sound card working after installing the RealTec drivers THEN installing the CirrusAudioCS4206x64 driver on top of it. Apparently this is key, installing one then installing the Cirrus drivers over it. All I know is that everything appears to be working. Hopefully this holds off needing a new PC for her for a year or two.

Thanks for the tips and good vibes everyone!

[ElZorro]

nice!

[Sabre]

Awesome

[Mr Kleen]

Picked up an MS Office license for $10 over the weekend, set up the printer/scanner, and got her bookmarks migrated. She's sent me a message today to say she's working from the new computer and loves it. Mission accomplished. B-) Hopefully it lasts for a couple years.

[Sabre]

$10?!?!?

[Mr Kleen]

Home Use Program

[complacent]

yep, still have my $10 copy.

[ElZorro]

My s****yawesome company doesn't participate. They did, for awhile, but it turns out it was by accident and they "fixed the glitch".

[zaxrex]

Yeah, it is going to be a rude awakening when I no longer have developer access to MSDN licenses.