Suspending with Boot Camp

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elan

Junior Member
I installed Parallels with a virtual disk, and then, with this last release, created myself a FAT32 drive to install programs onto. Initial performance measurements indicate that the physical drive is about 10 times faster than the virtual drive, so I think installing programs, pointing my temp directory, and putting my source code on that drive will be a big win.

However, I have lost the ability to suspend!!! I used that all the time, and found it extremely fast and useful. I understand there are consistency issues here, but I think:

a) At the very least, Parallels should give the option to enable suspending in an advanced menu.

b) It should realize that since I *boot* off the virtual drive, I'm not going to be booting off the Boot Camp drive, which isn't even bootable.

Thanks for a great product.

-elan
 
I suspect for the same reason you can not suspend a boot camp dirve, you probably can't suspend when accessing a real dirve as there is no way for Parallels to know if data was changed on the physical drive while the VM was in a suspended state. If the VM only uses virtual disk images, then on suspend they can safely lock the image to ensure nothing changes while suspended. This is not possible with a physical drive.
 
I can totally see that, but I think they should allow for an override. In my case, I don't mount my Windows volume with my Mac, and I don't have a bootable BootCamp partition so there's no danger of anything changing.
 
elan said:
I can totally see that, but I think they should allow for an override. In my case, I don't mount my Windows volume with my Mac, and I don't have a bootable BootCamp partition so there's no danger of anything changing.
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What do you mean you don't have a bootable Boot Camp partition? Isn't having that the point of Boot Camp?

Steve
 
I have been using Parallels since before they allowed for booting a BootCamp partition, so I already have a virtual disk that's bootable. I use a FAT32 partition (aka "BootCamp" partition) for programs and such, but I don't have BootCamp installed, nor do I intend to, because I don't even want to boot Windows outside of Parallels.

-elan
 
elan said:
I have been using Parallels since before they allowed for booting a BootCamp partition, so I already have a virtual disk that's bootable. I use a FAT32 partition (aka "BootCamp" partition) for programs and such, but I don't have BootCamp installed, nor do I intend to, because I don't even want to boot Windows outside of Parallels.

-elan
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I think the problem is, even if you can't boot off of it you might be able to add files to it while it wasn't up or something...

aside from that I'm sure you would have system problems that would arise... if your partition is like mine, then when your partition boots in parallels it disappears from access by your mac (except of course via parallels), if you were to put that system to sleep (or suspension) it would be difficult. If I undsderstand the software right (and I probably don't) I think that parallels would have to keep running in order to have the system be suspended. When it is running off of a virtual disc it can save the system and shut it down, and then be able to resume right from where it left off, unfortunately for us, when our "virtual machine" is on another disc, parallels has to be in it or out of it, it can't just put it to sleep.

I hope this makes sense to you... it's kinda hard to get across... but that's probably because it's 4 in the morning and I've not gotten much sleep >_<
 
So in 3188 can you or can you not suspend a VM that uses a Boot Camp partition? I've always been afraid to try. Well, I just did try and it seemed to suspend (pause) fine, unless this is not a "true" suspend (I didn't try quitting Parallels and starting again from the suspended VM). Is page 215 of the User's Guide now wrong? The problem is that whenever I need to reboot my machine, I've been manually shutting down Windows from the Start button when I wish I could simply quit Parallels, have the machine suspend, and then start up again later. I understand the file consistency issue, but it's not clear whether this has been overcome in 3188.

Steve
 
Hello everybody!

You can't suspend your "BootCamp" VMs. If you do that and then boot in native BootCamp you'll lose all data on it.

But if you want to use BootCamp partition in Parallels only and you know what you do...
We will think about this opportunity for experienced users.

Thank you.
 
The user guide tell us that BootCamp hdd VM cannot be suspend. But can we close the MacBook Pro, and put it in sleep mode, without having to stop the VM connected to the BootCamp HD.
Also, Using 10.4.8, on MacBook Pro core duo, with bootcamp hd in virtual machine built 3188, and working perfect.
 
Hello Fred,
If you close your MacBook, virtual machine will be paused. When you return to work you only need to resume it using 'Play' button.
 
I'm a little confused... If you close your lid Paralells linked to BootCamp is suspended? What if you do not resume and then boot from BootCamp? Wouldn't that lose data? Or am I misunderstanding?
 
I gave up the bootcamp partition specifically because I wanted to be able to suspend the machine - MUCH faster than starting and stopping the VM each time. If you can make it so as we can suspend the VM and have it at our risks of data loss if we forget to shut down the VM before rebooting in Bootcamp, that would be acceptable. You could put one of those application warnings when quitting the VM when running bootcamp that tells us this risk.
That would be a great feature. Thank you for looking into it.
 
Yes, please - a nice 3189 build with a simple command line config that would allow us advanced Bootcamp users to suspend would be nice.
 
Eru Ithildur said:
That sure would be nice... Most of my users rarely use BootCamp, it is more of a 'fallback' than anything else.
Click to expand...

Same for me. Except that I do have to boot in bootcamp once in a while to run WebEx, which still crashes in Parallels. If that one is ever fixed, I will have little reason to boot into bootcamp.

The ideal would be to install a little boot program that would just display an error message and shut down safely if the user does try to boot into bootcamp while suspended in Parallels. And of course go back to regular boot camp boot after shutting down Windows cleanly in Parallels.
 
Al_Q said:
Same for me. Except that I do have to boot in bootcamp once in a while to run WebEx, which still crashes in Parallels. If that one is ever fixed, I will have little reason to boot into bootcamp.

The ideal would be to install a little boot program that would just display an error message and shut down safely if the user does try to boot into bootcamp while suspended in Parallels. And of course go back to regular boot camp boot after shutting down Windows cleanly in Parallels.
Click to expand...
Really? That is strange, I have used WebEx on my Parallels computers several times now... I have used it on a MacBook Pro, iMac, and an XServe.
 
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I would also love this.

By the way, is there a way not having to enter my password every time I start my BootCamp VM?
 
Ditto

Ditto this feature request (to enable suspending a VM booting a Boot Camp partition.)

The "other" vendor allows this (via a semi-hidden change to a properties file). Even if it isn't exposed in the UI, a similar advanced feature would be a huge boon.
 
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