In retrospect, some of them seem like they may have been unnecessary. Note: I am going to list exact steps that I took to get this working. Just so you know, 99% of this was put together in the article I linked to above. This probably isn’t the last time that I’ll need to install Windows on a Mac Mini, so I figured I’d write everything down just to make sure I have a personal set of instructions to refer to. Some of the steps ended up differing slightly, so instead of trying to outline what I had to change here and potentially making things confusing, I decided to re-write the steps. But I did find this CNET article that supposedly outlined steps to install Windows 7 from a USB on a last-gen MacBook Air, so I figured this should also work for any Mac. Both were said to be impossible or nearly so by most. The two remaining choices were remote disk or installing Windows 7 with Bootcamp from a USB. I’m paying for the Mac Mini - why should I dish out more money to make it do what I want?

Most things I found online suggested buying an external optical drive, but that seemed backwards to me out of principle. As someone who needs to primarily run Windows 7 on this PC, I wasn’t sure what the best way to install this would be. The one annoyance with the new Mac Mini was the lack of an optical drive.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently upgraded my old Mac Mini (by “old” I mean purchased at the end of June) to a new Mac Mini.

Install windows 7 on mac from usb drive