Mac is one of the most powerful device ever crafted for Developers. From User Friendliness to the core of Shell Scripting, it has everything for the masses. It has been rightly said “There’s always room for improvement” and Mac is no exception to it. Some of the most wonderful Apps and Games are still not available for Mac and it is not going to happen anytime soon. This forced me to install Windows on my machine and like others, Boot Camp was my choice.
Believe me, from the time I opened Boot Camp till I was successful in installing Windows, everything was just nightmare for me. Errors, errors and errors! Thankfully, Internet is a sea of Information and Apple support was too generous to fix all my issues. One such issue was “The Windows Support Software Could Not Be Saved To The Selected Drive”, this error don’t let you to download Windows Support Software on your flash drive at any cost. Have you already tried downloading it several times and no success? Unsurprisingly, we sailed the same boat.
Luckily I managed to fix this weird error and successfully Installed Windows 8.1 on Mac. Sharing my personal experience and how I tackled it, today at GizmoStorm, I am here with How To Fix The Windows Support Software Could Not Be Saved To The Selected Drive [Boot Camp] :
Before We Begin, You Need:
I am assuming you have Windows OS ISO image with you ready.
- An 8GBs USB Flash Drive.
- A good Internet connection as you will need to download the Windows compatible drivers for your Mac.
- Little patience! Believe me, Apple servers are too slow to let you download Windows compatible drivers at high speed.
How To Get This Error Removed :
If you have already mounted Windows ISO image to the USB flash drive, then unfortunately that will be deleted in this entire process. I know Remounting will take some more time, but it’ll be worth the wait.
Step 1: Plugin in the USB drive and Restart your Mac in safe mode. In case if you don’t know how to do it, just press the Restart button. As soon as you hear the Start up Chime, press and hold the Shift button until you see the Apple logo.
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Step 2: Your Mac will start in Safe mode. You’ll notice that USB drive is not mounted as Safe Mode don’t automatically mount any external drive. We have to locate it manually. To locate USB drive in safe mode, head over to Go -> Utilities and select Disk Utility.
Step 3: Now, locate your external flash drive at the left side of the open window. Click it and Erase with MS-DOS(FAT) format.
Step 4: Now Restart your Mac once again, but this time in normal mode. You don’t have to do anything special, just press the restart button and your Mac will automatically boot in normal mode.
Step 6: Bingo! You are done with the tutorial. Now, just be patient until Support Software successfully download on your USB flash drive.
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I Hope it was your successful attempt to fix The Windows Support Software Could Not Be Saved To The Selected Drive error. I have faced every possible issue while installing Windows 8.1 on my Mac. So, apart from this also if you are facing any issues or errors, feel free to ask in the comment box provided below. Keep subscribed for latest How-tos at Gizmostorm. For more Mac Tutorials, head over to Mac How-tos section right away.
Thank you! I was failing for days; this worked on the first try.
My pleasure George 🙂
Rajat Jain, thanks for this article! Very helpful. However, I am confused. I am using a Macbook Pro 2012 with Yosemite and Windows 8.1. I had these two OS running before through Bootcamp and never had an option. I have now upgraded to SSD (240gb) got yosemite 10.10.5 installed and am having great trouble getting windows installed again. I had the same problem as this article is explaining, so then I tried to skip downloading the software and downloaded in manually, I put it onto a ExFAT partition for Windows to read once I had made the USB boot disk. I managed to install windows, which strangely had re-format the BOOTCAMP partition leaving it named ‘UNTITLED’ for Windows to install. Once I had installed, I could not do anything to get the computer to boot into windows… It was asking for a Bootdisk in Dos-prompt.
So I followed this procedure, I am currently still waiting for the support software to download… It has been stuck in one place for HOURS now, I am not sure if it is going to move. How long do you think i should wait?
Plus on the the fourth (last) screenshot you posted of the Bootcamp window, I have a 3rd option to make a USB boot disk. Yours does not show this?
Please could you advise on what I need to do to get this working as it should? Thanks!
Hi Josh,
I could tell you Apple servers are too slow to let us download the support software at the same speed as we are used too. Waiting is the only option and I assure you, you have done everything right. I am this sure because if you haven’t, you should have got the error “The Windows Support Software Could Not Be Saved To The Selected Drive” within 10-15 minutes.
Best of luck!
I followed these steps twice and I’m still getting the same error. Any other ideas on what I should try?
Hi Chad,
You could try it once again as this method works perfectly, in some cases there might be delay, but later or sooner it’ll eradicate the error.
Thanks for the troubleshooting column you’ve posted. I have not been able to get this to work though… When I restart in safe mode, my disk utility times out. Do you have any suggestions on how to fix/trouble shoot this issue? I downloaded the .img file to run WIndows 8.1 and I have scoured the internet looking for solutions, to no avail. Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Also, when I fire up boot camp assistant the application asks me to plug in an external drive after I click “continue” on the screen above. I have a formatted 2TB external to the required MS DOS (FAT) format. After a bit of downloading occurs, bootcamp comes back with either, “you have no additional space available”, or “unable to find your file”… Any suggestions?
I have NO idea why going into safe mode magically fixes this problem. All I know is that my new built PC is booting Windows now thanks to this article. 🙂
hi,
i already have windows installed as i went ahead and installed it without downloading windows software (because of the error message)
whenever i restart my computer it goes to windows automatically, my question is how do i restart in mac safe mode then?