How to install windows 8 system

The official version of windows8 has been released for some time, many friends have tried, this article Xiaobian for everyone to introduce how to install win8 system in mac system.

Many Mac users occasionally need to use Windows applications, and it is often most convenient to use virtual machine solutions like Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion and VirtualBox. This can cause some performance loss, but for most people, the convenience of running the program without rebooting is enough to make up for this deficiency.

But playing games is an exception. With virtualization solutions, 3D performance is drastically weakened, even completely (if you use VirtualBox), because most Macs lack a best-in-class graphics processor and can't be compared to Windows devices.

You can use Boot Camp to install Windows on your Mac, which means relying on Apple's Windows drivers to get everything working. The problem is that Apple is not very active in updating Windows drivers. When the new version of Windows was released, the problem doubled: Boot Camp's support for Windows 7 dragged on for about three months, and now a similar situation happened on Win 8. The tech media Arstechnica.com expressed strong dissatisfaction with this:

Go to his official support! We are going to install Win 8 on the 2011 iMac and the 2010 MacBook Air to see what will happen. The following is our installation record, maybe it can help those who don't like to wait for Apple to update drivers.

Installation Process

To install Boot Camp on the Cougar version, you need:

1. A Mac that supports Cougar has at least 20GB of free disk space. Of course, more will be better.

2, Win 8 or Win 8 Pro product key. Let's assume you are using a 64-bit version of Windows.

3, If your Mac has a CD-ROM drive, or if you use a MacBook Air model earlier than 2011, you will also need a Win 8 installation DVD (for earlier Air, you also need an external optical drive) ).

4. If you are using a MacBook Air in 2011 or 2012, or any Mac without an optical drive, you will need an external optical drive and a Win 8 installation DVD, or a 4GB or larger USB memory. Sticky and a Windows 8 ISO file.

5, an external hard drive in FAT format, or a blank CD or DVD to store Windows driver files.

After you've prepared these things, you launch Boot Camp Assistant from Spotlight (or from Applications→Utilities), which partitions the drive to install Windows and downloads the required driver files to your external hard drive. And (for MacBook Air, Retina MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini without an optical drive) Create a Windows USB installer from an ISO file.
Figure: Download Windows drivers with Boot Camp Assistant.

However, users of older Mac computers will find that the installer also requires a Windows installation DVD. You don't have the option to create a USB drive at all. — With an optical drive, you can't choose any other The method is gone. The strange thing is that the 2010, 2009, and 2008 MacBook Airs are the same, but these devices do not have an optical drive when they are shipped, so the owners must first get an external optical drive before they can continue.

After formatting the hard drive, let Boot Camp Assistant restart the computer and install Windows into the newly created Boot Camp partition. Be careful to format the Boot Camp partition as NTFS, but don't delete it —— this will destroy the partition and ask you to redo it from the very beginning.

The Windows installation process is very simple —— enter your product key and create a user account, the hardest part is done. “Start” After the screen appears, insert the external hard drive containing the Windows support files, open it, and run setup.exe.
Figure: Install Boot Camp support software.

Boot Camp installation process will not have any problems —— you only need to accept all the settings default values, and then wait, it will install all Apple driver software and Apple Software Update (Apple Software Update) ), when it prompts you to restart, you can restart.

Most Windows 7 compatible programs and drivers are also compatible with Windows 8. Fortunately, this one also applies to many Apple Boot Camp software, including read-only access to your Mac's HFS-formatted partition. On the Boot Camp control panel, you can choose the default boot partition and adjust other system settings just like in OS X.

Although there are some minor issues, such as some overlay graphics can not be used, and can not access FileVault encrypted volumes, but installing Win 8 will not cause system-level problems.
Figure: Some overlay graphics are not available in Windows 8.

Driver Problems

The biggest problem, especially for gamers, is the driver problem. Depending on the Mac model you are using, you may need to find and install some additional drivers —— some 2009 and 2010 Macs use the NVIDIA chipset, which requires a separate chipset driver to download.
Figure: This MacBook Air NVIDIA chipset lacks some drivers, but this problem is easy to solve.

The bigger problem is that the driver is out of date, especially the graphics driver. The Boot Camp 4.0 software was released in the summer of 2011 and has not been updated since, so you may find that its driver version is too old.
Figure: The driver version may be very old

But with just a few clicks, you can get the new driver —— Apple's PC graphics chip is standard, so they use the standard PC driver. The following table lists the graphics chips used by different Macs, their drivers, and considerations. All drivers are available for the 64-bit version of Windows 8.

Support for the Retina

Some MacBook Pros use a retina display. We installed Windows 7 on a 15-inch retina MacBook Pro and found that the 200% zoom effect is uneven, good, and poor. But Win 8 should be improved?

In fact, there is not much change. The problems in Win 7 still exist, some icons and texts look very eye-catching, other graphics (including the mouse pointer) look very dazzling, the biggest problem is still jagged — — different programs have a lot of The difference between —— some programs look very good, others are a mess (and some programs choose to ignore the zoom settings completely).

The Metro app is a little better overall. Every application I use often, from Win 8's own mail and calendar application to the New York Times and Kindle apps, works great. But not all applications, such as the Metro version of Chrome, it does not scale well.
Figure: "Start” The screen has separate zoom settings, you need to start → control panel → easy access, open “ make everything bigger on your screen”.
Figure: Most Metro apps perform well, but apps like Chrome still have problems.

Conclusion: We don't need official support

Macs come in a variety of configurations, so it's hard to generalize. But overall, running Win 8 on your Mac shouldn't be a big deal. The effect of official support may be better, but you will not be able to upgrade now.