Here we show you how to make a macOS Monterey USB installer on Windows PC, in the clean and easier way possible. Just read the tutorials carefully and it should work like a charm.
First, you need to download and install the required software/tools for this project. And these tools are:
- Balena Etcher
- MiniTool Partition wizard
- Paragon HFS + (Optional)
Not much software needed heh? Just install all of the Trial versions of them on your Windows PC, and download our copy of Monterey USB Installer DMG and our pre-edited OpenCore EFI folder HERE:
And you are ready to work!
Flashing USB flash disk with Balena Etcher
If you are familiar with this tool it should not confuse you. If you are new, this guide is just to make sure that you are confident enough with what you are doing 🙂
After Balena Etcher is installed, run the app. Then in the software user interface, in the first option section, choose ‘Flash from file’ then select the downloaded macOS Monterey DMG from our link.
In the second option, make sure your dedicated USB Flash drive is selected. It should be at least 16 GB in size. And hit that Flash button in the third section. See the screenshot below.
The process of flashing the USB disk is take pretty long, so be patient and wait till the process is complete. While you wait you can enjoy a cup of coffee or something or do other activities. It should be faster if your PC has the USB 3 port and your USB stick is USB 3 generation. If your USB flash disk is still version 2.0 then be patient 🙂 When the flashing process has been confirmed by the Balena app, you can go to the next step.
Make the USB flash disk EFI partition writable
After the flashing, your USB flash disk is now formatted as GPT and has the EFI partition in there. Unfortunately, you can just override the EFI partition Letter. Yeah, you can make it mounted, but you’ll not have the access to read and write the partition.
The easiest and fastest way to solve the issue is by using the MiniTool Partition Wizard Free version. Here’s how to make the USB EFI partition can be read and write in order to install the OpenCore in there. Make sure you have downloaded our pre-edited OpenCore EFI.
Run MiniTool Partition Wizard, and find your USB flash drive. You’ll see there the EFI partition. Click on it – right click, then choose to Delete it, yeah you are right, delete it. Confirm the action by clicking Apply – OK button. Next, reformat the Unlocated partition you’ve deleted and reFormat it into FAT32 and name it EFI. To do that, right-click on the unallocated space and choose ‘Create‘. Don’t forget to click the Apply button. See the screenshot below.
When the process is done you should see your USB EFI partition in the Windows File Explorer and can be read and write. Next …
Install OpenCore to the USB EFI partition
To install OpenCore into the EFI partition, just copy and paste the pre-edited OC EFI you have downloaded from our link into your USB EFI. And that’s it, now you can install macOS Monterey using your USB installer. Reboot your PC – go into BIOS and select your USB drive as the first Boot Drive – Save and Exit BIOS. Start the installation! Please check our old post the step by step on how to install macOS on PC. How to format drive etc as a reference here is one of them How to Install macOS Big Sur & Monterey on Hackintosh PC with Opencore – Easy Way!
Tips
In order to install macOS Monterey on a PC, you’ll need to optimize the BIOS setting for Hackintosh. Please see this article on how to do it: Setting UEFI BIOS on “old” Motherboard for Hackintosh
If you plan to dual boot with Windows OS, it’s better to install macOS on a separate disk than the Windows where installed to prevent dual boot issues in the future.
Please watch my quick video on how to create a macOS Monterey USB installer on Windows PC for reference;
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