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

Boot Camp is updated on the Windows side, not within OS X.

I had Boot Camp 3.0 with Snow Leopard, but I had to update it to 3.1 from within Windows 7.

 

You need to boot into windows, click on start>programs>apple software update (first program on the top).

 

here's a weird one:

I have RMClock installed on the Win XP install in Bootcamp (to undervolt the processor and make my MBP run cooler while in XP); if I boot into Win XP via VMWare Fusion, the next ime i boot into Windows natively via Bootcamp, my RMCloack settings are gone!

 

Hi, i think you may know about the time issue when dual booting windows and os x. The apple time gets reset when you log back to os x when you do not set it to be automatically updated. I bet it's the same issue here. The rm clock is losing your settings in the same way.

 

Hi, I´d like to buy Macbook pro 13, but I have question. I´ll work mostly in Windows at school. Can I simply virtualize Linux from Windows without any problems (if I´ll don´t want to reboot back to MacOSx)? Thanks for response

 

why ask here? if you load Windows on it, its exactly like any other Windows machine... of course you can do anything Windows can do.

Linux and Mac OS X are not that much alike...

 

you could use virtual box by sun in windows. It works fine.

 

Hi, i have a question, i am about to order a MBP 15'' and had a question about installing windows with bootcamp or VMWare, can i use this iso located here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/450641-windows-7-clean-install-instructions-cw-series.html to install windows on my mac? i know it will be 30 day trial but i have a key

 

There'll be no problems whatsoever. You're good to go. Just burn the ISO to a DVD and everything's cake from there.

 

thanks, also i have have never burned to a disk before, i need to get a dvd-r, right?

 

I would suggest DVD-RW if you can. Both can work, but I remembered my first time attempting a clean install for an HP laptop. I ordered 5 DVD-RW's off the internet, but couldn't wait for the two weeks for them to arrive. So I took a DVD-R from my cousin, screwed up the first time, and found out with DVD-R's it's a one and done. So I had to wait out the two weeks anyways =l.

Bottom line, DVD-RW if you can, be careful if you can't. But both will work.

You probably won't be as stupid as I was anyways.

 

thanks, ill just get a pack of dvd-rw from bestbuy

 

if you want something free, try virtualbox. i like the latest virtualbox very much, painless to install, all you need is the iso file of the win7 installation.

i just switched to mac less than 1 week, and i like the experience so far...

i think by default, you cant have the vm image install/point to another partition of your drive, what i ended up doing was after the installation is done, i detached the vm image file, move it to another partition and re-attach it through virtualbox...

 

Hey guys, I have a quick question about installing Windows 7 on my MBP. I don't know how large to make the partion for a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium. On the Windows 7 box, it states it requires at least 20GB of free disk space but the thing is, I'm not too sure how partions work. I'm installing Windows 7 only to play PC-only games so I'm going to install a few games but do those games have to be installed on the same partion as my Windows 7 installation (meaning I would need to increase the size of the partion to accommodate my games' installation)? Or can any future games/programs be safely installed anywhere on my disk and be accessed via Windows 7?

 

Considering that separate partitions are treated like two separate hard drives, you could realistically create a 20GB partition (or maybe a few GB more for some wiggle room) and store everything else on your Mac partition. Then when you're installing the game, you would need to set the destination folder somewhere on your Macintosh HD.

 

Well I already just took the middle road and divided my HD equally between Win7 and OS X. But I tested what you said by playing music files from my Mac HD from Windows and it works. I guess I didn't have to make the Win7 partition so large.

I probably will never need to resize it but in case I ever do want shrink my Win7 partition, I understand that there are 3rd-party programs that can do this but they aren't recommended?

 

70gb is ideal..but what xBEEMANx said about being able to write to the os x partition is completely false. You cannot write to the os x partition. You can only read from it. it would be better to use the bootcamp utility to resize the partition and install windows again if your are not happy with the size of it.

 

Hi guys... i have few inquiries...
Are the new macs with the c2d say with 2.4ghz still good value considering the pcs have the corei processors?
I still like to think the c3d 2.4ghz is a p decent machine..any toughts?

- also I plan to use Parallels 5 for windows 7 (i believe this is better than VM fusion?) ... is there an option to setup bootcamp as well and use the same partition as a parallels VM when on using mac os and then when I feel I want more performance/power simply boot natively thru bootcamp into the same vm partition?? is this possible?

- also any thoughts on parallels or fusion?

thanks

 

yes... but it depends how much power you actually need and what your doing to how good of a value they are.

Fusion and Parallels both support using a bootcamp partition booted in a VM.... you have to activate Windows in the VM though for both I think.. but install it in Bootcamp. They have directions on how to do this.

it all depends.. part of it is preference, some people just like one over the other, and some people think theres major differences. I prefer VMWare myself, but Parallels 5 is supposed to be very efficient. If you need to use VMware appliances and such, you have to have VMWare. Personally, I started out using Parallels and switched to VMware because it was just much more stable and worked as advertised. You can get free trials of both. If you want something free that works decently... you can look at VirtualBox.

 

you don't "use" bootcamp. its just a utility to help you install Windows... once its installed, its a normal Windows boot, just like dual booting any other machine. BUt yes, you can boot up in Windows directly, or boot up in OSX and run the same exact Windows install in a virtual machine.

 

getting an error Windows 7 - 0x80070570 Error Code once the installation hits 99% trying to load windows 7 64 bit on my macbook pro 13inch 2010 any suggestions

 

I found with paralells some of my propritary software for our company did not work. im going to try bootcamp when I get my mini up and running again and see if it works there, I may buy a mbp 13" for traveling....

 

any help on this guys

 

Bootcamp or Parallels? I had a ton of problems installing W7 64-bit on my son's 2010 MBP. The main problem was that you had to follow the directions exactly (I like to wing it), and that you have to use the disk that came with the computer (I used my Snow Leopard upgrade disks). In general, when I ran into a problem, I undid everything and started over again from scratch.

 

hey guys, does Fusion play better than Parallels when using either to boot the bootcamp'd Windows?

I ask because while everything works with Parallels, my double-HDD configuration led me to install certain applications on drives that AREN'T the main boot drive. I find that Parallels assigns random letters to those drives, breaking the shortcuts (complete with those ugly missing icons which persist for quite awhile even after booting directly into Windows).

What would be perfect for me is if my "D" drive in Windows would appear as the "D" drive when I run Windows through Parallels as well. Is there a way to do it in Parallels that I've simply missed? If not, can Fusion do this?

thanks, guys.

 

Bootcamp

 

The new parallels 6 is wayy better than fusion...check out on youtube.

 

Is it safe to have both Fusion and Parallels installed at the same time? Has anyone tried both on the same Boot Camp partition? I'm hearing that Parallels is quicker on it's feet these days... and want to try it out before I make the switch.

 

VMware Fusion 2 and Parallels 5 were pretty equal, though Parallels kept claiming all these massive speed boosts.... Parallels 6 though is noticeably faster, finally making their claims they are faster than Fusion to be true... I haven't tested things much, but hopefully they have their graphics improved a lot, as I have a number of games I've tried in VMware 2 and Parallels 5 that always worked in VMWare but many would not work right in parallels... hopefully 6 is better at that, I haven't tested yet since I have only played around with Demos. VMWare works fine for me so I don't want to pay for a new product just yet.

 

Installed just be fine. Running at the same time would surely be more difficult. On top of that, if you want to run them together from the same Boot Camp partition, you are just asking for problems...
I guess you could try and let us know.

 

i dont think you can run both at the same time because the bootcamp drive is mounted when used in parallels. This means the drive can only be used by parallels..I believe the same happens in vmware fusion...you can run them at different times though.. It will work fine.

 

question: how do i use left click in window bootcap? since mac os uses one click on touch pad.

 

1 finger click is left click... 2 finger click is right click.

Make sure you have that enabled in Bootcamp settings in control panel

 

On my late-model 17" two-fingers does not work usually. What I did was, while in Windows, go into Bootcamp and check the bottom right corner button for the right click. That seems to work reliably.

 

Just installed parallels desktop 6 yesterday. I've had desktop 5 since January but I've not used VMs in OS X for the last 3 or 4 months. I've been using a seperate HDD dedicated to a large 500GB bootcamp Windows 7 64bit partition instead.

But with this newer version of Parallels Desktop 6 I'm using it with the Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 update 5 x86 64bit as the guest OS. I've installed Oracle 11g R2 into it and it is pretty sweet for messing around in and experimenting without worying about messing up. If I mess up I just drop the vm and try again.

Anyway, I really like the Parallels Desktop products over the Vmware Fusion 2.0 that I had previously (when I first bought my Mac back in May 2009). I don't know how the latest version of vmware fusion compares today with parallels but as it is right now I have no intention on switching back.

 

Hello,
I have PD6. Trying to make work the Nvidia 330GT in my windows 7...>
tried to install nvidia drivers...it does not identified the card
tried to solve it with windows update...nothing!
tried to tell parallels destop in its preferences that I have that card! but nothing


does anyone know...??????????

Thanks!

 

Parallels cannot directly use the Graphics card... OSX is using it.

You need to install Parallel Tools (available on one of the top drop down menus while Windows is running). This will install a Parallels graphics driver.

 

What about in Boot Camp? Will Nvidia's regular drivers install with no hacks?

 

it should... you don't go "in bootcamp" you boot into Windows.

 

The hardware has to be explicitly supported by the drivers though, and I don't know if Apple's notebooks are.

 

have a question about bootcamp. so if i decide on my macbook route an run windows on a macbook, does that mean I loose a lot of the functionality for the mousepad?

 

Three- and four-finger swipes don't work as they do in OS X, if I remember correctly.

Could be mistaken (or there could be third-party utilities -- not sure).

 

3,4 finger swipes do not work in windows by default. Only 2 fingers for right clicking works.

 

how is the functionally with trackpad for parallel desktop? Is it better than bootcamp?

 

I'm hoping that the latest BootCamp drivers support the trackpad in Windows.

 

I have a quick question. Do any of you Windows 7/Vista Boot Camp users see that if you boot the computer on the battery the power icon still says "plugged in not charging" even though you are running on the battery?

 

I've installed win7pro on the bootcamp partition of my Macbook pro 2010 and recently purchased "Parallels v6 switch to mac" - mainly in order to have the alternative of using win7 optionally in a virtual enviroment. So I would like to use the bootcamp partition in the virtual machine without loosing the option of booting win7pro physically from the bootcamp partition. However, I came across the reactivation issues, especially discussed in the thread

Windows 7 activation Parallels and Boot Camp

It's stated there that from the view of MS, it's not possible to use one win7 key physically and virtually on the same machine since this is regarded as two different enviroments - comparable to 2 PCs - and thus requires 2 win copies. But even if you'd purchase another win7pro copy and try using 2 different keys for win-BC and the VM, it evidentally would not work for just the single installation of win 7pro on the Mac. So it looks like there's a real dilemma making the purchase of Parallels pretty obsolete - at least for the alternative use of win 7pro in BC and the virtual machine. You evidentally just have one option of using win7.

I should mention that I've been using PCs until recent and so far, I'm a newbie in the Mac world. I read that the activation problem is also mentioned in Sam's introduction though the article evidentally refers to a previous version of Parallels (v4).
I don't want to screw up my working win7 installation on the BC partition by installing Parallels nor run into the reactivation issues and therefore would like to know if anybody has found a workaround here in the meantime and can point me to the solution.
I'm sorry if this problem has been already discussed here. I went through 20 pages of this thread (but admitted not through all 75 ;-) Thank you in advance

Wolfgang

 

i've never had any problems of this sort when using my bootcamp as vm in parallels 5. Have you clicked the activate now button? What happens? Could you try to re enter your serial and see what happens if you reactivate it? I've never encountered this problem before.

 

Thank you for your reply. I've not yet installed Parallels and therefore don't know if I personnally would run into this kind of permanent reactivation issue, too when trying to use the bootcamp as VM. Since it seems to be a common problem (also mentioned by Sam, see http://forum.notebookreview.com/app...oot-camp-parallels-desktop-vmware-fusion.html) and since Microsoft clearly stated in the article above, that the physical (BC) and virtual enviroment (VM) is considered as a change of hardware by Windows and thus seen as 2 PCs, I've been hesitating to install Parallels until now. I don't want to encounter problems with my running BC partition. That's why I was asking here.
Those who had reported the problem had to call MS for reactivation but faced the problem again when trying to use the alternative setup then (BC or VM). Reactivation via the web (clicking the button) or re-entering the serial number didn't work for them.
Since you evidentally did not run into this problem, I'm thinking of trying the installation now. From your posting I'm not sure though, if you've been using Win7 both virtually and physically (via bootcamp) as an option which evidentally is the source of the problem. Just converting BC into the VM and giving up the option of booting win physically might work. But I wanted to keep both alternatives. Nevertheless I would appreciate some more experiences of the experts in this regard.

Thank you

Wolfgang