Boot Camp - No operating system installed

[tjementum]

Hi

I've just installed Parallels on my new MacBook Pro.

Before that I've installed Boot Camp and Vista.

When I try to create at Parallels Virtual Machine which uses my Boot Camp installation, it says:

"There is no operating system installed in the virtual machine..."

I do think I know why, because when I installed Vista I created an extra partition to hold my data (a D-drive in Windows).

That is my partition schema looks like this from Windows:

200MB EIF
28.0GB Appel_HSF
80.0GB NTFS Extented partition (my Windows D-drive)
40.7GB NTFS Primary partition (my Windows C-drive)

But from Mac OS X it looks like this (when i run diskutil list):

200.0MB EIF disk0s1
28.0GB Apple_HFS Macintosh HD disk0s2
120.7GB Microsoft Basic Data disk0s3

So Mac sees my 2 windows partitions as 1.

Are there any way to have Parallels boot my Windows partition?

Should I "switch" my to Windows partitions? I just read somewhere that the Windows partition should be the last partition.

: Thomas

 

[brkirch]

Unfortunately your current partition setup cannot work because Windows uses a Master Boot Record (MBR) and when you created your partitions using Windows tools they were written to the MBR but not to the GUID Partition Table (GPT) that OS X uses. This means that you will need to repartition using diskutil in OS X before you can use your Boot Camp partitions with Parallels.

Here's the procedure you need to follow:

1. Backup all your Windows data.
2. Use Boot Camp Assistant to restore your disk to one partition. (this will erase your Windows partitions so don't do this until you have backed up your data!)
3. Reboot.
4. Open the Terminal (in Applications > Utilities) from an administrator account and type

sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 28G

and hit return. Type in your password and hit return.
5. Reboot.
6. Open the Terminal from an administrator account and type

sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 28G "MS-DOS FAT32" "Windows C Drive" 40.7G "MS-DOS FAT32" "Windows D Drive" 80G

and hit return. Type in your password and hit return.
7. Reboot.
8. Install Windows on the 40.7 GB partition by booting onto the Windows install DVD (you can reformat the 40.7 GB and 80 GB partitions as NTFS if you want).

I haven't tested that myself, but it is based on triple boot instructions for Boot Camp and should work for the partition setup you want. If you are told that you have multiple Boot Camp partitions after you have done this, use this script to reconfigure your virtual machine to work with your partition setup (or alternatively you can configure this yourself).

 

[tjementum]

Thanks

Hi brkirch

Thanks... this did it.

I'm now up and running with Vista in Parallels including a 80 GB Windows D-drive.

I did have to change your proposed names from "Windows C/D Drive" to shorter name like "System" and "Data". But apart from that your guide was spot on.

I to me a extra day, but I'm happy. Thanks.

: Thomas