I came up with a trick which gets you close to a unified bootcamp/parallels XP installation.
1. When you install bootcamp, partition your drive for the OSX/Data/WindowsSystem scheme, instead of just OSX/WindowsSystem, as is explained on the onmac.net wiki: http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp . You need a FAT32 partition that is independent of both OS X and Windows.
2. Install XP on the bare hardware partition, and also install it in Parallels.
3. Go to bootcamp and install all your programs, except, when you install them have them install to the letter of your data partition, instead of to C.
4. In parallels, map the /Volumes/DATA or whatever your data partition is named to a shared folder (read/write).
5. Boot parallel windows, and navigate to the shared folder of your data partition. Choose Map Network Drive from the menu and set it to the same drive letter that bootcamp calls your data partition.
6. Install your programs _again_ to the data drive. This sets up the registry, shortcuts, etc. properly in parallels now.
7. Enjoy access to your programs from BootCamp and Parallels both!
There is even a way to map your My Documents to a different drive, so that that can be shared. I don't remember it off the top of my head but I have definitely done it.
In the end this will save you loads of hard drive space, and unify some of your program settings. Because the drive letter is the same from bootcamp and parallels, you will not have the endless problems that trying to directly map the bootcamp drive will give you.
The problem with this is that the registry is not shared. This may not be so bad in the end. Another trick if you want to be adventurous, is, instead of installing your programs again in parallels, map your bootcamp partition to a parallels read-only shared folder. Then map it to a drive in Parallels windows. Then add [that_drive]:\WINDOWS and [that_drive]:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 to your system path, giving you the ability to load the dlls installed there. Then you can try running your programs directly without a reinstall. Some will work... many won't.
Someday later this week I may write this up better and post it on my blog, I will let you guys know.
~perle
Last edited: Jun 19, 2006