Parallels working great, wanting to create Boot Camp capability

I have a MacBook Pro 2.5, 4gb ram, 200gb hard drive running Leopard with Parallels installed along with XP Pro and Vista Business. I'd like to have the ability to boot with Boot Camp. Since my machine works fine now, I'm concerned about screwing something up. It would be nice to be able to boot directly into XP Pro and Vista so that resources on my machine are not shared by Leopard. Is it possible to setup Boot Camp without altering my Parallels configuration? Will I have to reinstall both Windows OS's in order to boot with Boot Camp?

I realize that this is a Parallels and Boot Camp question but am hoping that someone has had this same question and may suggest a solution before I create a problem!

 

You can install Windows in Boot Camp, it is not related to Parallels until you want to use Boot Camp in Parallels

 

John,

What would I need to do to be able to use my XP and Vista install for Boot Camp and Parallels? I don't have the HD space to have a separate install for both.


dB-A1

 

I am afraid, no, but I didn't check such configuration, but 2 partitions can mess the things,but I suppose if you will be able to use Boot Camp assistant it will write entries in GPT correctly
I had configuration, when Windows where installed on external disks, and I used it to boot either for Boot Camp or as Parallels

 

I also had this question. My Leopard Macbook had Parallels with XP installed when I got it, and it works great for most things. I was wondering if Parallels had some booting ability so that (like the OP) I'm not sharing resources between two OSes when I have a large file -- or, failing that, if there was some way to use Boot Camp with my existing Parallels setup.

thanks!
Justin

 

Yes, you can use Windows installed in Boot Camp for Vm,
please refer to Parallels Desktop for Mac user guide from http://www.parallels.com/en/download/file/doc/Parallels_Desktop_for_Mac_User_Guide.pdf on page 265

 

Can you do it the other way around, though? If you have VM configured already can you just point Boot Camp at that? Boot Camp seems to want a fresh install, and the Parallels help docs seem to assume you've already got a Boot Camp drive configured before buying Parallels.

Thanks for your help!

 

If you do not have Boot Camp, you need to install it?
Do you have Boot Camp?

 

John, he already has a Virtual machine with Windows installed, he wants to use that installation for Boot Camp. He would have to create an image/clone of the virtual drive and then restore that clone into a Boot Camp partition, an external drive would be helpful for doing this transfer, it's feasible but it's not simple to do, and you apparently haven't got the space in your HD to make a clone (I would recommend you would use an external drive for transfering the clone). It also requires a live cd (normally a linux distro) that can do cloning and restoring of NTFS.

 

Yep, got it.
G4l is what you need
http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l

But, Install Windows first as Boot Camp Assistant in order to put correct entries in GPT
after that use g4l, after that Windows repair

 

Thanks folks, I'll give this a look! The whole WinXP install is relatively new and I don't have a ton of files migrated over from my old machine yet -- might be easier just to wipe the windows install and go from the Boot Camp partition first.

-Justin

 

If it's new it's a lot easier and less headache prone to install it again from scratch.