Basic Boot Camp Questions

[RalphT]

I've made the decision to reinstall EVERYTHING on my iMac for various reasons, with the main one being that Windows XP is installed twice due to having to go back to v5 from v6 and ended up losing my Windows XP ".PVM", causing me to reinstall Windows. Initially, I did not use Boot Camp. This time I would like to install Boot Camp primarily to have the option of being able to reformat the partition if needed. Learned this the hard way.

Hate to ask this basic question but, should/do the Windows applications also get installed on the partition or just Windows XP?

On my 7 year old Dell, everything is occupying 69GB of space. This includes all my personal files which are now on the Mac side. Also, some of my applications that I used in Windows have been replaced with Mac OS applications which reduces the Windows disk space requirement even further. I was thinking 75GB should be plenty with all things considered.

What partition size would you recommend for Boot Camp?

Can Boot Camp be expanded if necessary without complications?

 

[joevt]

There shouldn't be a need to install Windows XP twice to switch between v5 and v6. All you need to do is uninstall Parallels Tools in Windows, then reinstall the new version of Parallels Tools.

Being able to reformat a partition is good. I think being able to delete a virtual hard disk and making a new one is also good and maybe slightly easier / simpler / safer / faster.

Windows applications should and will be installed on the Boot Camp partition especially if you want to use them in Boot Camp and you only created one Boot Camp partition. Installing applications elsewhere is unnecessarily complicating things.

Boot Camp partitions cannot be expanded unless you use a utility that can move partitions at the same time. I don't think Disk Utility can do that but
iPartition can. Since Boot Camp partitions are not easily expandable, and you have a 1 TB drive, why not go with something like 100 GB? The decision also depends on how much of the 1 TB drive you expect to use with Mac OS X.

 

[JeeA]

Im a new mac user and totally lost and need help......

I cant get microstation (architectural drawing program) to run in Parellels, it opens for about 30 seconds and then crashes

how do i expand my partition? maybe this might help as my local shop installed parellels desktop 5 so i dont know?????

my C drive has 65GB on it any ideas?

 

[RalphT]

Okay, now that I have already reinstalled v5 and Windows XP without using Boot Camp, what is the best way to get the Windows OS into the Boot Camp partition once created? Does Windows have to be reinstalled on BC or is there a way to move it?

If it must be installed fresh onto the partition, how do I remove it from where it resides currently?

I agree, a 100GB partition seems reasonable and allows plenty of room for expansion, although at 64, I can't imagine needing any more than what I've been using in the past when I was actively running a photography studio and had plenty of good size image files stored on disc.

 

[joevt]

Install Windows to the Boot Camp partition using the Boot Camp instructions. That's probably easier than trying to move Windows from one partition to another. Also install the Boot Camp 3 drivers and update to Boot Camp 3.1 with Apple software update in Windows.

You can right click the virtual machine in the Virtual Machine List window and select Remove, then choose "Move to trash". Then create a new virtual machine that points to the Boot Camp partition. Follow the Boot Camp virtual machine instructions in the Help menu.

Another way is to just remove the Hard Disk 1 file from the existing virtual machine configuration (select Hard Disk 1 then click the [-] button, and choose "Move to trash"). Then create a new Hard Disk 1 (press [+] button) and make it a Boot Camp type that points to the Boot Camp partition.

Parallels never deletes a .pvm or .hdd. It will move them to the trash if you ask it to. When you tell Parallels to move stuff to the Trash, examine how it affects the virtual machine files in ~/Documents/Parallels. Also look in the trash for the stuff that got moved to make sure the correct stuff was moved to the trash. Always look in the trash before deciding to empty the trash.

You could decide to keep the extra Windows XP virtual machine that uses the virtual hard disk. So you would have two virtual machines - one for Boot Camp and one for a virtual hard disk - that both contain Windows XP.