The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    installing win 7 64 bit as a virtual machine

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by bikerc, Sep 12, 2010.

  1. bikerc

    bikerc Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    9
    Messages:
    98
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Hi,

    I need some advice with this.

    I am planning to buy a MacBookPro and I need to run Windows 7 64 bit on it. For now I want to run it as a VM and not through bootcamp. I currently have a laptop with win 7 64 bit and ultimately I want to run this in OSX side by side.

    To run this I have two options, Desktop Parallels and WM Fusion. I didn't decide which one I should use yet.

    Now, can I do the following:

    1. Create an image from my win 7 laptop physical drive.
    2. Import/transfer the image to OSX and run it using Desktop Parallels or VM Fusion.

    I wouldn't mind hearing your experiences with both vm tools, if you went through this process end to end. I am worried that I will start on a path just to discover later that there is some little thing that doesn't work quite as expected. I want to get it right.

    Thanks!
     
    bikerc, Sep 12, 2010
    #1
  2. Nick

    Nick Professor Carnista

    Reputations:
    3,870
    Messages:
    4,089
    Likes Received:
    649
    Trophy Points:
    181
    Nick, Sep 12, 2010
    #2
  3. bikerc

    bikerc Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    9
    Messages:
    98
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Let's put the legality issues aside for a moment as long it is not impeding the VM software to work otherwise it becomes an issue. I have the MSDN subscription which allows me to use Windows 7 for development. I just don't want to spend time installing again all the software that I am using. I also remember that in Win7 there is a change product key option. I have more than one key and my win7 laptop is going to be retired.
     
    bikerc, Sep 12, 2010
    #3
  4. Khris

    Khris Yes I am better than you!

    Reputations:
    655
    Messages:
    2,608
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    You will likely have less problems to just do a fresh install of Windows in the VM.
     
    Khris, Sep 12, 2010
    #4
  5. bikerc

    bikerc Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    9
    Messages:
    98
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    the Joker: Thanks for the link.

    I found that there is the option to install win 7 64 bit in bootcamp and then I can run that from OSX using Desktop parallels or VM Fusion as VM and, if I want, I have the option to run windows in bootcamp. It probably means I will have to install win 7 from scratch in bootcamp unless there is a way to somehow get an existing image into the bootcamp windows partition. I need to do more research.
     
    bikerc, Sep 12, 2010
    #5
  6. dbam987

    dbam987 wicked-poster

    Reputations:
    565
    Messages:
    2,530
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    56
    I believe you can copy over an image of your original Win 7 hard-drive after you let the Boot Camp Assistant initially create the partition for you. Then you can use a utility like CloneDrive to finish the process. I haven't tried this, so not sure.

    It's highly advisable to just do a complete fresh install of Win7 using Boot Camp Assistant. You'll encounter less problems that way.
     
    dbam987, Sep 14, 2010
    #6