Real Partition instead of disk image as virtual disk
- Thread starter Karsten
- Start date
Andrew @ Parallels
Parallels Team
Thanks for suggesting - this feature is already in our roadmap and will be included in the next versions of Parallels Workstation.
Andrew @ Parallels
Parallels Team
Sure it will be optional. You will choose between image, real disk or real partition.
Sure it will be optional. You will choose between image, real disk or real partition.
If you guys put this option in the final release version then I'm buying it for sure!
I like bootcamp because Windows XP runs fast and does not have to share the CPU and RAM. I love parallels because if I quickly need to run a program I can do so without booting to Windows. The problems is, if I want BOTH I would have to have two copies of Windows installed on my HD which is crazy.
If you guys put this option in the final release version then I'm buying it for sure!
I like bootcamp because Windows XP runs fast and does not have to share the CPU and RAM. I love parallels because if I quickly need to run a program I can do so without booting to Windows. The problems is, if I want BOTH I would have to have two copies of Windows installed on my HD which is crazy.
g_ronimo said:
Me too. THis is my #1 requested feature: the ability to 'boot' parallels from bootcamp partition.
For a more detailed explanation of what I need for 1.0 (very basic real partition support) and what could be done for a 1.1 instead (more 'plug&play' userfriendliness, with automatic hardware profiles built up for native vs virtualized), check this thread:
http://forums.parallels.com/thread307-2.html
Dual XP (Boot Camp and Parallels) with one copy.
Posted on MacWindows.com
http://www.macwindows.com/bcreview.html
"Activation worked fine with Boot Camp for a licensed copy of XP that had not been previously activated on any PC. But once I rebooted into OS X to install Windows again using Parallels the activation failed with the same Product Key. A quick call to I Microsoft solved the problem. I explained to the tech it was the same machine, just two different ways of installing it, and but that didnt seem to compute. She asked if it was installed on the same machine as if to suggest to me that is all she wanted to hear was that it was the same machine. I think the key phrase to use is, reinstalling on the same machine. She then gave me the confirmation number and I was off to the races. So far as I can imagine this is perfectly legal in the US, but Im no lawyer."
Posted on MacWindows.com
http://www.macwindows.com/bcreview.html
"Activation worked fine with Boot Camp for a licensed copy of XP that had not been previously activated on any PC. But once I rebooted into OS X to install Windows again using Parallels the activation failed with the same Product Key. A quick call to I Microsoft solved the problem. I explained to the tech it was the same machine, just two different ways of installing it, and but that didnt seem to compute. She asked if it was installed on the same machine as if to suggest to me that is all she wanted to hear was that it was the same machine. I think the key phrase to use is, reinstalling on the same machine. She then gave me the confirmation number and I was off to the races. So far as I can imagine this is perfectly legal in the US, but Im no lawyer."
joe12south
Bit poster
Let me add my voice to the chorus for bootcamp partition support.
there's a problem with your concept of real partition usage.
Just so everyone here knows, (hopefully I'm wrong but) i believe that there are going to be problems if parallels does end up allowing us to use our bootcamp partition as a boot partition (with read/write permissions). First of all xp will probably see the different operating environment (parallels virtual machine with it's virtual bios and virtual hardware) as a different machine from the bootcamp environment (which is your native mac hardware with mac-boot-level hardware drivers etc). That means windows activation problems unless you're lucky enough to own a corporate version of XP pro sp2. it probably means your license will expire since my memory tells me there's a limit to the number of hardware changes xp's activation allows before you have to purchase another activation. I konw you can call microsoft and say you're reinstalling, but I doubt they'll do that for you every time you change from using bootcamp to parallels and vice versa!
So once you get around activation problems, XP still won't work in both environments without having to fix itself majorly upon every fresh start in the other environment. By fixing itself I mean needing the xp disk to install lots (I mean LOTS) of hardware drivers, and it won't find several of them probably each time so you'll have to manually fix it. I know this happens from experience with vmware's similar capability of booting from a real partition (it famously screws up the partition so it's unuseable as a native windows xp boot partition from then on.) So it's likely you'll kill your bootcamp install if you try to run parallels from it in this manner.
I've been tossing around ideas of read only windows installs but nothing jives in my head, speaking as an experienced software developer but not an OS or virtual machine developer so no doubt somebody at parallels has already thought of this and it is the cause of the delay in this feature's release. Either parallels' dev team has an idea of how to work around the problem and is working on it but it's taking time, or they haven't found a workaround yet and are either leaving it out for now or will allow partition booting but will recommend against sharing your install with bootcamp.
Now the GOOD news is that having partition-level access is that you could conceivably have one partition which contains your documents (your "my documents" hahaha), and that could be shared by bootcamp and parallels so you would be able to work on the same files using either environment (parallels or bootcamp). However it wouldn't save much space at the beginning of your XP use since you'd still have to install xp twice and install all (or at least most) of your applications twice (anything that needed to customize the registry and/or install dlls in your windows system folders, stuff like that). But you'd only have one copy of everything you download, one copy of everything you're editing (word files, graphics, development stuff, music, saved games, chat histories, etc.)
I hope that's correct information and helpful information, if you doubt what I'm saying about XP handling the environments differently try taking your windows hard drive out of your pc and installing it in another pc with a similar motherboard and similar processor but different bios manufacturer, different hard drive manufacturer and size, different ram config, different usb/serial/parallel/ps2/keyboard/mouse/display/sound/3d/battery/chipset. You'll see windows take an extra hour to startup and will require you to help it figure out it's driver problems every 2 minutes along the way. That's my experience anyway. And that's more or less the difference in what xp sees between bootcamp and parallels.
Good luck with this idea and I hope parallels can prove me wrong! I'd love to share my xp install and applications installs as well, I just don't think it can be done. Maybe though there's a setting in windows to allow different hardware profiles??? that might solve this problem but I don't know how to do it.
Cheers,
Dkelley
Just so everyone here knows, (hopefully I'm wrong but) i believe that there are going to be problems if parallels does end up allowing us to use our bootcamp partition as a boot partition (with read/write permissions). First of all xp will probably see the different operating environment (parallels virtual machine with it's virtual bios and virtual hardware) as a different machine from the bootcamp environment (which is your native mac hardware with mac-boot-level hardware drivers etc). That means windows activation problems unless you're lucky enough to own a corporate version of XP pro sp2. it probably means your license will expire since my memory tells me there's a limit to the number of hardware changes xp's activation allows before you have to purchase another activation. I konw you can call microsoft and say you're reinstalling, but I doubt they'll do that for you every time you change from using bootcamp to parallels and vice versa!
So once you get around activation problems, XP still won't work in both environments without having to fix itself majorly upon every fresh start in the other environment. By fixing itself I mean needing the xp disk to install lots (I mean LOTS) of hardware drivers, and it won't find several of them probably each time so you'll have to manually fix it. I know this happens from experience with vmware's similar capability of booting from a real partition (it famously screws up the partition so it's unuseable as a native windows xp boot partition from then on.) So it's likely you'll kill your bootcamp install if you try to run parallels from it in this manner.
I've been tossing around ideas of read only windows installs but nothing jives in my head, speaking as an experienced software developer but not an OS or virtual machine developer so no doubt somebody at parallels has already thought of this and it is the cause of the delay in this feature's release. Either parallels' dev team has an idea of how to work around the problem and is working on it but it's taking time, or they haven't found a workaround yet and are either leaving it out for now or will allow partition booting but will recommend against sharing your install with bootcamp.
Now the GOOD news is that having partition-level access is that you could conceivably have one partition which contains your documents (your "my documents" hahaha), and that could be shared by bootcamp and parallels so you would be able to work on the same files using either environment (parallels or bootcamp). However it wouldn't save much space at the beginning of your XP use since you'd still have to install xp twice and install all (or at least most) of your applications twice (anything that needed to customize the registry and/or install dlls in your windows system folders, stuff like that). But you'd only have one copy of everything you download, one copy of everything you're editing (word files, graphics, development stuff, music, saved games, chat histories, etc.)
I hope that's correct information and helpful information, if you doubt what I'm saying about XP handling the environments differently try taking your windows hard drive out of your pc and installing it in another pc with a similar motherboard and similar processor but different bios manufacturer, different hard drive manufacturer and size, different ram config, different usb/serial/parallel/ps2/keyboard/mouse/display/sound/3d/battery/chipset. You'll see windows take an extra hour to startup and will require you to help it figure out it's driver problems every 2 minutes along the way. That's my experience anyway. And that's more or less the difference in what xp sees between bootcamp and parallels.
Good luck with this idea and I hope parallels can prove me wrong! I'd love to share my xp install and applications installs as well, I just don't think it can be done. Maybe though there's a setting in windows to allow different hardware profiles??? that might solve this problem but I don't know how to do it.
Cheers,
Dkelley
Last edited:
Not necessarily a problem:
1) Windows isn't the only operating system that parallels will run, and it isn't the only OS that can be installed on a Mac EFI partition.
2) Windows corporate edition won't have registration problems.
3) Windows has had hardware profiles for a long time, that prevents the need for reconfiguration at every boot.
So far the only reason I can imagine why the Parallels team promised this as a feature, and then pulled the support for it is because they don't want to deal with the tech support calls from people that don't understand the underlying technologies. Which is a fine reason, list it as unsupported and make the user click through half a dozen warnings telling them not to call tech support etc.
1) Windows isn't the only operating system that parallels will run, and it isn't the only OS that can be installed on a Mac EFI partition.
2) Windows corporate edition won't have registration problems.
3) Windows has had hardware profiles for a long time, that prevents the need for reconfiguration at every boot.
So far the only reason I can imagine why the Parallels team promised this as a feature, and then pulled the support for it is because they don't want to deal with the tech support calls from people that don't understand the underlying technologies. Which is a fine reason, list it as unsupported and make the user click through half a dozen warnings telling them not to call tech support etc.
I'm sure that a 'boot from real partition' would be very helpful to many of us.
If this could work for a bootcamp/parallels cooperation on the same partition, I don't know: I know that windows has hardware profiles, and those are made up for similar cases (different hardware configurations), but maybe not that extreme as two COMPLETELY different hardware (as parallels/bootcamp are).
Yet, I would still want to have that as an option, because other OSs may not share this problem (I know for sure that several Unix can be configured to work on several hardware, with custom kernels to be chosen at boot time), and because in the end we COULD find a way to make it work on windows anyway.
I think it's a worthy feature anyway, it's very very easy to implement for Parallels as Andrew said, and it could become a killer feature if someone find a viable way for making parallels/bootcamp work on the same partition (after all, there's BartPE, a 'live' windows distribution, that boots from ANY hardware ANY time, without hassle or huge waiting for driver riconfiguration).
If this could work for a bootcamp/parallels cooperation on the same partition, I don't know: I know that windows has hardware profiles, and those are made up for similar cases (different hardware configurations), but maybe not that extreme as two COMPLETELY different hardware (as parallels/bootcamp are).
Yet, I would still want to have that as an option, because other OSs may not share this problem (I know for sure that several Unix can be configured to work on several hardware, with custom kernels to be chosen at boot time), and because in the end we COULD find a way to make it work on windows anyway.
I think it's a worthy feature anyway, it's very very easy to implement for Parallels as Andrew said, and it could become a killer feature if someone find a viable way for making parallels/bootcamp work on the same partition (after all, there's BartPE, a 'live' windows distribution, that boots from ANY hardware ANY time, without hassle or huge waiting for driver riconfiguration).
VMWare Workstation raw disk with WinXP guest
maybe this article helps?
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-246371-highlight-ntfs vmware.html
maybe this article helps?
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-246371-highlight-ntfs vmware.html
nilski said:
Good pointer nilski!
This shows it *CAN* be done using hardware profiles, since someone succeded in dual-booting native/virtualized on a single real partition.
Now, we've got to wait for Parallels support for real disks / real partitions.
Any news there Andrew?
What did you mean with 'next versions'? Did you mean Parallels 1.0GA, or we'll have to wait 1.1/1.2?
I need this ASAP!!!! ^_^