Virtual Machine

S

StellenboschStudent

Expert Member
Joined
Nov 24, 2007
Messages
2,067
Reaction score
1
Location
Geordie land
Ok, so, I have been using bootcamp ever since I got my Mac. By now I have more and more apps for Windows I need to use, but I don't want to reboot to Windows all the time... So VMWare looks like the best solution to date. But, is there a method how I can get my bootcamp Windows drive onto that virtual machine? Or is it a fresh install? If it is a fresh install, can I just copy and paste the Windows directories, or any other, easier method?
 
Parallels and VMWare (I think) both let you boot from a Bootcamp partition - AFAIK virtual box currently doesnt let you do that but then it's free where as the others arent.
 
you can use a program called paralell or fusion .These run as programs without dual booting. Hope this helps
 
Both VMware fusion and Parallels will boot a bootcamp partition out the box - you will need to load the respective tools to get native graphics support and all the bits and pieces that make it useable. That will (or, should) :) leave the bootcamp installation totally intact.

1 caveat: depending on your windows version and the current state of the nation, it will require re-activation as it detects being booted by the VM as a total hardware change. there are a few articles on this on the respective product forums.

I used to use parallels and just switched to VMWare fusion, running windows 7 off my bootcamp partition. Works well enough that I haven't booted natively into windows since I installed it 2 weeks ago, and I use Visual Studio and SQL server in the VM which are fairly resource intensive.

I didn't experience any issues with the 'migration' at all...
 
Get sun Virtual box. Its free and it works really really well. I am using it for Microsoft .Net development.
 
gumpie said:
Get sun Virtual box. Its free and it works really really well. I am using it for Microsoft .Net development.
Click to expand...
It does indeed work well but afaik doesnt yet let you use a bootcamp partition.
 
Thrown one of these windows 7 release candidates into a VM, doesn't run as smooth as i would have expected...
 
phiber said:
Thrown one of these windows 7 release candidates into a VM, doesn't run as smooth as i would have expected...
Click to expand...
It's windows - throw as much ram at is as you can spare and expect it to still suck
 
Threw 2 gigs it at... shouldn't have to throw more...
 
Last edited:
my 7 installation (off bootcamp) is working perfectly with 512MB. It did get extremely unstable in between VMware Tools updates - latest update resolved that.
 
bsd242 said:
my 7 installation (off bootcamp) is working perfectly with 512MB. It did get extremely unstable in between VMware Tools updates - latest update resolved that.
Click to expand...
I guess a lot depends on what you're using windows for and what type of machine you're using - ||s wanted me to throw a lot of ram at it and so far it doesnt look like virtualbox is much different.

I wouldnt install W7 on a real pc with less than 1gb of ram if I could avoid it. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X