Help need install PD4 and BC on new MBP.

I have a completely clean, just setup, 2.8 GHz MacBook Pro with OS X 10.5.6 on it. I have a Vista 64x business and XP Pro SP3 32 bit DVDs. I want Vista in a clean, untouched by PD4, setup. I intend on installing XP as a VM under PD4.

Can somebody specify the best sequence of steps to do this in?

My Apple understanding is you want to install BC and Vista first.
My PD4 manual understanding is if I do that it will try to create
a VM of the Vista BC during PD4's install. I do not want that!!

I'd like a clean BC partition with Vista on it that PD4 cannot see
for my own sanity reasons. I'd still like to have PD4 and XP
available from OS X. I'd settle if PD4 could only read the BC partition.

All suggestions are welcome.

Rich

 

Help creating a partition to use with Windows BC and Parallels

I don't know the answer to your question but wonder if you can help me. I also have a new MacBookPro and just want to copy over (one time) the working BC VM that I have running on my iMac, using Windows XP. The two VMs don't need to stay identical after that.

I have a backup of the iMac VM (made with Winclone) but there is no Windows partition on the MacBookPro and I can't find information anywhere on how to create one. You sound like you have done this. Can you tell me what to do, or point me to where you found the information? (Once I have a Windows partition, I should be able to restore the BC VM using Winclone. At least, so they say.)

I'm not doing this to cheat re/ licenses; I have Parallels and Winclone installed on both machines, and have the licenses for that. I also have two licenses for Windows XP and all of the other software I use. But I don't want to start from scratch and have to reinstall all of my Windows XP software when the existing VM has everything working that I need.

 

Worst case:
Install Parallels Desktop now, IMO. You shouldn't have to create a VM, but if you want to, make the XP VM now via PD4. This will create a hdd FILE (as opposed to a real physical partition).

Then run boot camp assistant, create the partition you're using for Vista, install Vista in Bootcamp, do the drivers, etc.
BootCamp recarves your hard drive physical partition to dual-boot the machine (one partition for Mac foo, one for Microsoft foo) and sets up initial pointers so the install process can run. Pay careful attention to the bootcamp instructions, little things like the eject key won't operate until the drivers step is done.

Boot camp assistant creates a physical partition for you to attempt your Microsoft install on. Parallels Desktop can give you a VM mount of that partition if you want, but doesn't have to. You can easily have a bootcamp partition of whatever, and separate VMs of whatever other OS completely independent without ever having to let PD touch the bootcamp/Vista partition.