I purchased Parallels about a week ago as part of an app bundle but not wishing to 'waste' my registration code I decided to try out the trial version for a few days. I already have Wndows 7 installed as a Boot Camp partition so I asked Parallels to set it up as a virtual machine (which it did). But here's my question.... does Parallels effectively copy my Boot Camp partition - or will it be permanently linked to it from now on? For example, if I boot up into Windows 7 (via Boot Camp) and install some snew software (or receive some new emails) will those changes appear in the Parallels version, next time I use Parallels? Or did Parallels effectively take a snapshot of Windows 7 which will now be separate from the actual Windows partition?
Hi John E, Parallels Desktop simply uses your existing Windows installation in Boot Camp (is linked to it). Thus, changes made on Windows side when booted directly to Boot Camp, are visible when Windows is accessed though Parallels Desktop.
Thanks for the prompt response. Creating a VM from my Boot Camp volume is very appealing but here's a problem that someone else flagged up to me though.... At the moment, Parallels is reminding me that I'll need to re-activate Windows. Apparently this is because Parallels presents a different hardware profile - therefore tricking Windows into thinking it's now running on new hardware. That's all well and good - except for the fact that Windows saves my activation information in the Windows registry. Therefore if I re-activate now, but then (later) I boot directly into Windows (i.e. using Boot Camp) the Boot Camp activation data will then be wrong and I'll be asked to re-activate again. And every time I swap between Parallels and Boot Camp I'll be continually asked to re-activate. Do you know if that's true??
Can anyone confirm if the above rumour is true? I can't see Microsoft being very happy if I'm continually asking to re-activate Windows (even if technically, it's on the same physical machine).
This is 100% true, and if you change anything significantly in Parallels you may need to register it again. I have both my Boot Camp and Parallels VM linked Windows 7 registered using 1 license. I had to call the 800 (or was it 888) that is an option if you can't register automatically. The support staff for Microsoft did not care that I had a Boot Camp partition and was also running it as a Virtual machine, all they cared was that it was only 1 mac I was running it on. I changed my partition size using iPartition and the Boot Camp partition stayed registered but the Parallels VM no longer worked. I simply created another VM from the BC partition and all was well, but of course I had to call MS to get a new registration code. Again this was no problem when I explained what I had done. Megavolt17
