Running Windows on a Mac: Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop & VMware Fusion

thanks, that's a big advantage over bootcamp then.

 

Yeah, that's a big advantage. Also there are many improvements in gaming on a mac. Steam is being ported to the mac platform. Also doh123 is working on a wineskin wrapper. It seems amazing from what i have read on her blog. It allows you to copy games(and most windows programs) on the wrapper and it will create a mac installation file out of it. Therefore you can install it on your mac and play natively.

 

its Wine.. its sort of native.. it has native version dlls and such for OSX.. but its still non-native.

Its basically using Wine in the same way that Transgaming uses Cider to make Mac ports of games.

 

And about battery charge performance? I know running Windows natively under bootcamp results in fewer hours of battery power than when running OSX.
But what about Windows under Parallels?

 

a virtual machine will put a lot more work on your machine... meaning its going to use more power, run hotter, and spin the fans up more... it will also decrease battery life while running.

 

Hey, Kedest, you could use xp in parallels. It's quite light for tasks such as web browsing and office.

 

Is it normal to not be able to see the NTFS partition on which my Windows 7 install resides?

When booting into Windows, I can see and read my OS X partition courtesy of Apple's HFS drivers (of course, I can't write to it without HFSExplorer / MacDrive). But when booting into OS X, there's no obvious sign of the NTFS partition.

I do have MacFUSE / NTFS-3g installed.

 

Nope, it's defnitely not normal. I see my windows partition when in os x and os x partition when in windows. Try uninstalling acFUSE / NTFS-3g. May be these are creating compatibility issues.

 

I've done this, but the partition still isn't visible. I elected to format it as NTFS when I installed; in Disk Utility, there's a partition that's the proper size (the same as my Windows install), but (a) doesn't have the proper disk name, (b) is listed as FAT instead of NTFS, and (c) fails verification and repair attempts.

Weird that NTFS-3g / MacFUSE could cause such a thing just by virtue of being installed when I established Boot Camp and my Windows install.

 

seems like your partition is corrupted. I would suggest you remove the drive, connect it to another computer and backup your data. Then proceed to a clean format of your drive.

 

Hi,
I searched very long for a few answers of my questions but all I found were old articles from the introduction of boot camp on Apple Notebooks. I hope someone with the newest bootcamp-software could answer my questions because I want to by a MacBook Pro but need to run Windows on it.

1.) What about the data? Are files seperated between Windows and Mac OS? Or could I use (read,write) e.g. Word-files used in Windos with Mac OS and files usend in Mac OS Files with Windows?

2.) Windows 7 Professional allows my to encrypt my files. Is this also (relatively) save on an Macbook Pro?

3.) On a normal Windows Notebook, I could set a password before booting. Is this also possible on a MacBook Pro? Windows should only start after entering a password?

4.) When I start the MacBook Pro with installed boot camp, does it start the last uses OS automatically? Or do I have to switch each time from Mac OS to Windows?

5.) Is it possible to have several partitions when running windows (e. g. C: for the programms, D: for the files...)

Thank you!
Corinna

 

I'll try my best to answer your questions in the order written:

1. Data is separated on different disk partitions entirely. Macs use a different file system than windows (HFS on Mac vs. NTFS/FAT on Windows). These two file systems are not normally readable by the other operating system, however Mac OS X can READ NTFS partitions from Windows, and BootCamp includes Drivers to allow Windows to READ HFS volumes from Mac OS.

This functionality is READ ONLY, so you could OPEN a file from your Mac on your Windows PC (given that you have the appropriate software) but you could not SAVE it back to your Mac drive. The same scenario works in reverse with the Mac opening a Windows file.

Its best to treat the two as separate environments entirely. There are utilities that try to help break down this barrier, but as a beginner in this space, I wouldn't dive in to that just yet.


2. Windows 7 (and Vista for that matter) includes a feature called BitLocker Drive Encryption. This works as a password protection for your drive's contents. This would work for Windows as it would with any Windows PC. although depending on your knowledge of this tool, exercise caution, as encryption of your data, and loss of encryption keys or corruption/drive loss would render your data completely destroyed unless the appropriate backup plans are in place.


3. You're referring to a BIOS security password, or BOOT password. This is not a capability of Boot Camp, since its using the Mac's EFI to boot the Windows partition, instead of a true BIOS, which does not support password-protected booting. However, if you encrypt your partition with BitLocker, the machine would only be accessible to someone with your password, so at least your data would be secure.


4. The Mac remembers the user's preference for OS to boot. You can change the preference in the "Startup Disk" control panel on the Mac, "Boot Camp" control panel in Windows, or by holding the "option" key while booting.


5. Boot Camp only officially supports a two-partition system (one Mac, one Windows). You can however partition your Windows drive into several partitions once you've completed the Boot Camp paritioning, but stability, and supportability of this solution is questionable at best. You're better off keeping your Windows environment on one drive for supportability and well-tested functionality.


I've also got a few tips for you to make your experience the best possible:

- Based on some of your questions, and assumed requirements, you may want to look into a Virtualization solution instead of using Boot Camp. Products like VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop give you some features I think you're looking for, without the limitations or driver issues of Boot Camp:

• 
  Windows/Mac File sharing (read AND write)

• BIOS Boot Password Security (and Mac access would be required to even boot Windows)

• Partition Flexibility (Create as many virtual drives as you want for a Virtual OS)

These options may also be less resource-intense, as they only consume resources while in use, and are much more disk-space conservative. Unless your requirement includes high-end graphics access, for Gaming or CAD/3D, I'd seriously look into one of these products.

- If you do decide to go the Boot Camp route, especially with Windows 7, I HIGHLY RECCOMEND getting Snow Leopard and the Boot Camp 3.1 updates for the latest drivers and TRUE WINDOWS 7 SUPPORT!

Good luck, and feel free to ask any other questions you might have, or toss me a PM if there's something I can clear up from the above.

 

Thank you for your answers, mikeyharm.

I still have some minor questions to your answers:

1.) If I save MAC OS JPG-Files on an USB-stick I could open them in with Windows. If I save them again with Windows on the USB-stick, I could open them with MAC OS. In this case read/write is possible because one OS could read what the other OS has saved. Couldn't I establish something like a virtual USB-stick on the harddrives where the same function would be possible?

3.) I only have experience with Windows XP and older. If I start a password locked Windows XP (no Boot password, just the Windows-Profile-Password), I could still access the computer with the guest login AND access all the data. Is this also possible with Windows 7 or do I need the BitLocker Drive Encryption to make it hard to impossible to access my data? Could MAC OS also read encrypted data? What happens, when I save encrypted data on an USB stick? Could other Computers read it?

X.) Thank you for your additonal tips. I think I would work most of the time with Windows and Windows programs because I am used to it. I think I would not really need an Apple computer except for a few programms like iMovie or the nicer design of the MacBook Pros. Best thing for me would be the hopefully today introduced new MacBook Pro 13,3 with Windows 7 but with an emulator for a virtual Mac OS where I could use e. g. iMovie ;-)

 

1)its possible to view jpg formats both in os x and windows.

3)in windows, a guest user cannot see an administrators files. In os x, encryption is a bit different. If you have lost your password, it is near impossible to recover it. i dont think mac encrypted data is readable on windows and vice versa.

X)i would suggest you get a pc coz windows experience on a macbook pro is awful with all the heat building up and low battery runtime, not to mention poor apple drivers for windows.

 

With Boot Camp 3.1, what's poor about them (besides the battery hit)?

 

you are locked to the 9600m gt/330m(for new ones: Its confirmed). exi, it seems like you know IT quite well. Have you ever heard of nvidia powermizer? The card underclocks itself when not gaming or using gpu intensive tasks. Well by default, it's disabled. Also, powermizer is quite stupid. As soon as you open a window or minimise it(when windows aero is used), it automatically clocks the card either to high performance 3d or low 3d. This is unacceptable. The trackpad drivers are not that great in bootcamp 3.1. It's still too sensitive. Also the backlight does not want to shut down when you dont want it on. The machine heats up considerably. I've tried lubbo fan control to decrease the thrshold temperature to 58c. When it reaches 58c, the fans kick in at full speed. Even then, the gpu temp goes well into the mid 60's centigrade while browsing the web...

 

I see. Wasn't actually aware of powermizer and the "issues" with it in Windows via Boot Camp -- I thought that 3.1 was a decent improvement over 3.0, but clearly you're better versed in Windows on Mac than I am.

 

Well, it IS better, in fact it is less worse than the already worse drivers. So it's still an improvement. Hope that you got an idea of what i meant and i hope i helped you.

 

Sure did on both counts. Thanks.

 

its no prob...if can get back here with any questions regarding bootcamp...i was hooked on it for a long time before giving up on it.

 

So, the Wine or the Wrapper allows me to run Windows software in OSX without a VM or using Bootcamp?

My games tend to be RPGs (expansive worlds, longer play time like Oblivion or Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, etc). I know some of these are available as OSX natives, but I can do 'wrappers'?

 

sure... for Wine usage thats what I design Wineskin for... making wrappers to run games. No Windows needed. Wine is always a work in progress, so its not perfect and cannot run every game out there.

I've yet to try getting Morrowind running, though I've seen wrappers floating around the web for it, probably some Crossover or Cider hack. Last time I tried getting Oblivion working, there were some graphical problems with Wine (newer Wine version are supposed to work better though). I play Oblivion in a hacked Cider wrapper that runs it great though, so I haven't worried about it. NWN1 and 2 I play both with Wineskin wrappers I made, and they run great.

 

there are games that don't run though. i tried installing football manager 2010 on it but it wouldn't run the game..i need to figure out how to cider wrap.

 

its listed as mostly working in Wine... did you try any of the info in its AppDB entry to get it working?
WineHQ - Football Manager 2010

 

nope, i didnt get the time to play with it. I installed it. and when launched the wrapper, it would go in a black screen and that's it. I had to quit it. Will try again after the exams are over.

 

yeah.. Wine is usually not just plug and play.. it takes tweaking and settings changes all over to get something working right. Thats why its a pain to get it working right for 1 app and another then doesn't work.. etc... thats why with Wineskin I like making fully self contained apps, where changes to one wont affect anything in another.

 

yeah i also noticed that. i will be learning some wrapping techniques this weekend. portingteam.com seems like a very resourceful place. Cider wrappers are quite popular there.

 

how is the battary life on windows 7 with mac

 

i hear it is around 4 hrs on the 2010 one.

 

I run Windows 7 as a VM with VMWare Fusion and I get about 7 hours of battery life on my 13" MBP (2010).

 

If only it could do that running Windows 7 natively! The battery hit in Boot Camp is why I don't use my MBP to run Windows as my "primary" OS.

 

you lucky thing!!i wish i had the 2010 one...the late 2008 seems like a hungry kid as compared to the 2010 ones.

 

lol, I had to turn down some of the Windows 7 perks to achieve that though. Some of the things I turned down were:

1. I disabled most of the Aero effects, but left the one's that allowed the window to be translucent and to get the preview windows on the task bar. I turned off the shadows, and some other things I can't remember.

2. For the Zune player, I turned down the graphics acceleration to the 'basic' setting. I didn't need the fancy stuff that full acceleration brings.

3. The screen brightness is at 50%.

 

The settings are pretty decent for the battery life obtained.the screen brightness is the most power hungry of all.

 

I have been thinking about getting a MBP. I could probably live with 4 hours in Windows, as long as it was longer with the Apple OS.

BTW, some people have claimed that Windows run slower on a Mac, but a colleague of mine, who likes Apples for the better hardware and screens, says he does not have that problem.

 

what is meant by "slower" ??

Generally Windows will run just as fast as it would on any other machine with the same specs. OSX will be a bit faster than Windows for some tasks though.

 

Good pooint. I thought they mean Windows would run slower than on a PC, but maybe they just meant slower than OSX.

 

THey might have been talking about a virtual machine... if you run Windows in VirtualBox, VMWare Fusion, or Parallels... it runs on a virtual machine on top of Mac OS X. It has some great advantages, but it will run a lot slower than actually dual booting and running Windows directly... which is what Bootcamp lets you do. Its great with a virtual machine because you still have Mac OS X and can run WIndows and Mac programs at the same time... but virtual machines can be slow, depending on what software your running, and are next to useless for newer high graphics games.

 

Bootcamp starts windows natively. You get the raw power of your mac to install windows.

 

Thanks for the feedback. This is question I have asked before, but not on this thread, the existance of which I somehow missed. I have had an IBM Thinkpad T 60 for 3 years with which I have not been happy. So I have been kicking around the idea of getting an MBP and going back an forth between OSX and Windows. I live in a Windows universe at work, so there is no avoiding it. I see that Luke seems to have his doubts about using Windows on a Mac, but a colleague of mine has not had troubles going back and forth (albeit on a desktop). Any words of wisdom? If you have seen my posts before, feel free to ignore this one.

 

opinions will definately vary on this subject of using a Mac to run Windows on a regular basis.

I use my Mac running windows on a regular basis for my business. I began by running XP Pro in bootcamp. Later I decided to try a VM within OS X. So I bought vmware fusion and imported that XP bootcamp environment into a virtual machine to be run within OSX. Worked great. So well that I got rid of Bootcamp and reclaimed that disk space.

Then I heard about parallels 5. So I then imported the vmware XP vm into Parallels. I loved parallels much more than fusion. Much more efficient with memory and resources and it worked perfect.

But then my business was migrating from XP to Win7 64 bit. Soooo, I bought a 2nd internal HDD to replace the optical drive. I installed Win7 64 bit using bootcamp to build the partition on the 2nd drive. I'm using the entire 2nd drive for Bootcamp while keeping the main HDD reserved for my beloved OS X.

I've been using Win7 64 bit in Bootcamp for a month or two now. Been great in that it can take advantage of all 8GB of my memory. Also, much much faster than when it was in a vm. For example, I play Left 4 Dead in Win7 and it runs great. That would've been impossible within a vm in OSX. I've since gotten rid of my virtual machines within OSX. OSX is not cluttered with windows anymore. ha

Some nice examples about having a vm within OS X though is that while using the XP apps and running a VPN (ATT Global Network Client) with a firewall that would normally prevent me from printing locally or accessing my private email in outlook, etc... just open an OSX mail or print from the within OS X instead. Or browse the internet or watch iTunes movie while working in my vm XP VPN.


*the biggest issue (and it is simply overcome by training/learning) is that the Mac's keyboard layout is quite different from a PC. To do screen shots, for example, I press FN+SHIFT+OPTION+F11 to get a snapshot of the active window. To page down I press FN+DownArrow. To go to the end of a file, instead of CTRL+END (since there isn't an END key), I press FN+CTRL+RightArrow. And there are many other key combinations that you'll need to familiarise yourself with.

If you want a Mac and love the OS X... but still need to run windows and don't want to buy TWO computers... then running windows in bootcamp is swell *in my opinion. True, the Mac is not perfectly tuned for windows (or vice versa) and there are some temp issues but nothing major. I've been quite happy. In fact, this is being written from bootcamp

 

The new 2010 macs are better than the previous generations. You can get around 4 hours battery life on windows when using bootcamp. Battery life is good even when using virtual machines. i'm booting xp on parallels 5 at work and this seems fine. CPU is at 58c and GPU at 50c. It's pretty decent. I would advise you to install xp if you want better performance as it is quite light as compared to w7 and vista when using vm's. the gpu gets quite hot when using bootcamp...Upper 60c and low 70c when browsing the net.

 

would it be possible to have both bootcamp AND VMFusion or Paralleles installed so that you have the choice of running win7 natively or virtually ? Sorry if this is a stupid question.

Wolfgang

 

yes... both support booting up the Bootcamp installed version in a virtual machine, so yo can use the same install of Windows for both.

 

yep, as luke mentioned... you can have all three if you like. I did at one time have vmware, parallels, and bootcamp setup

 

Yes, its possible. In fact, i use xp in my vm's and w7 as bootcamp start up os.

 

I read somewhere that bootcamp doesn't like 64 bit os. I have the mbp 13in 2010. It has 4 gb of ram so it makes most sense to use 64 bit but should I go for 32 just in case?

 

There's some funny stuff that you have to do for 64-bit vs 32-bit. You have to absolutely get the drivers from the install disk. I installed 64-bit but got the drivers from the Snow Leopard disk and it didn't work. I tried installing the updates from the web and it still didn't work. Finally reformatted and installed over again and installed drivers from the install disk and all was well. They have some special stuff on the disk that comes with the MacBook Pro that isn't on their web updates.

The reason that I did it that was was that I installed the OS from the install disk in the office and I left it there and used the Snow Leopard disk from home. 64-bit does install but follow the directions to the letter.

 

you should use the bootcamp disk which you have received or the one which you have purchased if you have upgraded to Snow Leopard. Then enable the software update. As soon as this is done and your laptop is restarted, click on software update and bootcamp 3.1 should be available. Download it and install it. Your trackpad should be better and your laptop heat should go down. Download powermizer switch and activate powermizer. Go to mouse settings and decrease the scroll rate from 3 to 1 line when scrolling. Do the same thing for horizontal scrolling. Install your antivirus, office, firefox (for me coz i like it) and other utilities. also keep in mind that you should have approximately 70gb for bootcamp coz new games fill up disk space like crazy. When gaming, do not obstruct the fans. Also i would suggest to download lubbo fan control to control temperature threshold. Bring the upper threshold to 55c and let the lower to 40c. Your laptop will always remain in the upper 50c and low 60c. You can install any version of w7. I had w7 64bit and 32bit installs. Both seemed to run fine but i defaulted to 32bit because visual studio express edition did not like 64bit.

 

thanks for the helpful info Luke. I updated my software by clicking on the apple shaped drop down button. It said my system was completely up to date but does that necessarily mean that boot camp is up to date?