Unified Bootcamp/Parallels Install

[FearoftheNight]

Hey guys,

Is it possible to share an partition/install of windows between parallels and bootcamp? My intent is to use my normal programs office/winamp and so forth through parallels and bootcamp it to game. I really don't want to have 2 installs of windows, is this possible? Thanks in advance!

 

[bearxor]

Yes.

The thing that I noticed, however, is that the Boot Camp partition is much slower in parallels/fusion than a virtual hard drive.

 

[TheStu]

It is slower (usually) yes, but not having to have 2 installs of Windows on your Mac for when you just need to check something quickly is real helpful.

 

[indamixx99]

Hmm... I should give this a try as it'll free up a few gigs off my hdd

<-- currently has 2 windows installs.

 

[FearoftheNight]

Thanks! So if I wanted to set that up do I use bootcamp first or parallels/fusion?

 

[TheStu]

First, download and install BootCamp
Run BootCamp to partition the drive and burn off a driver disk
Put your Windows XP SP2 or Vista disk into the drive and restart the computer
Install Windows normally onto the partition that you specified (whatever you do, do not delete or format the 250MB partition on your drive)
Once Windows is installed, install the drivers, update Windows, download and install AV and all that jazz.
When you restart, hold down Alt to get the Boot Menu and choose your OS X partition.

Install VMWare or Parallels (honestly you can have both on there if you want to see which works better, but just don't have them actively running at the same time)

Both of them have fairly straightforward processes to use the bootcamp partition, just keep pressing next when setting up the VM.

 

[bearxor]

After trying to use Fusion and boot camp for about two weeks now, I'm think I'm going back to a separate windows install. It's just too slow. I agree with Stu that it's fine if you just need to use something quickly but if you use it constantly, say for Outlook in a corporate environment, it's an absolute PITA.

 

[TheStu]

How much RAM have you given Windows Bearxor? You have 2GB on your MBP, you can afford to give Windows 512MB+

 

[bearxor]

1GB. Windows XP flew with 512MB in Parallels. When I went to Fusion it seemed to lag so I gave it 768MB. Then I did the Boot Camp partition and gave it 1GB, which has noticeably slowed my OS X work as well.

Honestly I just think that Fusion is slower than Parallels. Prettier, more stable, more integrated with OS X, sure. Just slower.

 

[FearoftheNight]

How much slower is parallels than bootcamp? I assume bootcamp is much better for gaming of course. But say I want to want streaming video on my netflix, internet radio on winamp, or type something up on office 07...how is it? Or are we talking about 5 seconds to bring up the start menu slow?

 

[TheStu]

I can stream Netflix on my Fusion install with 512MB RAM. I have also been able to do it on 384MB RAM, but it is a little choppy at parts. I consider that to be one of the most taxing things I can do, so there you go.

BootCamp makes it easy to install Windows natively, once Windows is installed, BootCamp's job is all done, it is a native install.

 

[FearoftheNight]

Would more ram fix the choppiness? I just orderd a MBP with 2.2 c2d and 2 gigs of ram? If I used parallels would the experience be smooth? I hate choppy computing =x. Especially in the year 2007.

 

[TheStu]

Well, if you have 2GB of RAM, then you can effectively give it 1GB of RAM and still be able to multitask quite a bit. As of now, I am fairly certain that only VMWare supports Leopard, and it doesn't do it very well (I, for example, have no keyboard support) so you may want to wait until you start hearing some more news of stability.

 

[eatmoreramen]

Can someone help me?

I have the standard intel 15" macbook pro, and I currently have windows installed via parallels.

However, certain games I want to play require DirectX9, which parallels doesn't support but boot camp does.

I don't want two Windows installed on my mac, and I know you can go from boot camp to parallels.

The important question: Can you go from Parallels to Boot Camp?

If so, how do I go about setting up so that Boot Camp uses the partition I have already set aside for using with windows?

Thank you so very much!

-Mikey

 

[dclive]

It would be convoluted.

You'd ghost your Parallels drive into a disk image (using Ghost or something similar) then partition the drives using Boot Camp, then boot from a BartPE CD and put the disk images you made onto the new Boot Camp-created partition.

From there, you should be able to boot natively into XP, and from there install the Boot Camp specific drivers for a better experience.

Acronis Disk Image or other software might make this a little easier... but I know if no way to go from Parallel's / Fusion's VMDK to an actual disk partition without work something like the above, on the Mac.