Upgrade current Windows 8 Boot Camp to Windows 8.1

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wynand32

Junior Member
I have a Windows 8 Boot Camp configuration that I'm running in Parallels no a MacBook Air 2012 Mountain Lion. I'd like to upgrade it to Windows 8.1 RTM. First, can I do this? Second, if so, should I perform the upgrade in Boot Camp or within Parallels? I'm guessing the former, and then Parallels will adjust, but I'm not certain.

Thanks!
 
I've had no problem with regular Windows updates being done in Parallels. I don't know about major upgrades though and I haven't tried an 8.1 upgrade.

When Parallels is used with a Boot Camp OS, it is always by definition used after the OS was installed with Boot Camp. I think it's best to maintain that usage order. i.e. Upgrade in Boot Camp, then use Parallels afterward. This will make sure all the hardware of your Mac is seen by the Windows update.
 
joevt said:
I've had no problem with regular Windows updates being done in Parallels. I don't know about major upgrades though and I haven't tried an 8.1 upgrade.

When Parallels is used with a Boot Camp OS, it is always by definition used after the OS was installed with Boot Camp. I think it's best to maintain that usage order. i.e. Upgrade in Boot Camp, then use Parallels afterward. This will make sure all the hardware of your Mac is seen by the Windows update.
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Thanks for the reply. I did try upgrading to Windows 8.1 from within Boot Camp itself, and I'll be darned if that didn't hose the Mac's MBR. Boot Camp and OS X worked fine, but the MBR was no longer in a state that Parallels would accept. I might have been able to fix it, but just rebuilding the Boot Camp installation and re-configuring in Parallels was easier and probably ended up saving me time.

So, my advice to others who might be so tempted: don't. Unless there are official instructions from Parallels on how to do it without hosing your MBR.
 
I tried updating from within Parallels without much more success. I got an error that Windows was trying to update the Boot Loader and was being denied. Then Windows rebooted and said it was restoring an old version of Windows. Then I ended up in an error condition and it wouldn't boot at all.

I ended up running the disk recovery tools and finally I could boot back into Windows 8. Despite their claim Parallels 9 may not be ready for Windows 8.1.
 
sh0knah said:
I tried updating from within Parallels without much more success. I got an error that Windows was trying to update the Boot Loader and was being denied. Then Windows rebooted and said it was restoring an old version of Windows. Then I ended up in an error condition and it wouldn't boot at all.

I ended up running the disk recovery tools and finally I could boot back into Windows 8.
Click to expand...

Boot Loader might refer to the boot code on the MBR. Parallels doesn't allow write access to the MBR or GPT of a Boot Camp disk. The DiskDescriptor.xml file of the virtual hard disk .hdd shows that those parts of the virtual hard disk point to file copies (PhysicalMbr.hds, PhysicalGpt.hds, PhysicalGptCopy.hds) and that they are write protected. If they weren't write protected, the update would only affect the copies and not the actual MBR and GPT of the disk which means the changes would be visible in Parallels running Windows but not to the Mac running Windows. If those parts of the virtual hdd pointed to the actual parts on the disk, then it might work if permissions allowed it but I haven't tested that.

sh0knah said:
Despite their claim Parallels 9 may not be ready for Windows 8.1.
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I think your problems just have to do with upgrading an OS on a Boot Camp disk from Parallels and not with the actual OS itself. The safest thing to do is upgrade the OS by booting the Mac into Windows. Regular software updates can be done from Parallels.
 
Following a suggesting in another thread on an apparently unrelated problem, I removed the USB hardware from the VM in Parallels configuration.

I then ran the update again, meaning to capture the exact text of the error to post here. I did get the Boot Loader error again, but the install worked.

I then re-added the USB hardware in Parallels config and now everything seems to be happy happy. :)

Anyway, that's what worked for me and now Windows 8.1 seems to be working fine in Parallels. It's installed in Boot Camp, but runs as a VM within OS X.
 
From some other threads with similar issues:

Do the repair disk using Disk Utility on the drive not the volume. Had same issue and the repair on the drive fixed the GPT/MBR mapping/alignment issue that resulted from the 8.1 upgrade.
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Worked for me. Oddly, the first time I did the upgrade, had the problem, and tried Disk Utility, I had no luck. The 2nd time, it worked fine. My upgrade procedure ended up being:

- Change startup disk to Boot Camp partition & reboot into Windows.
- Perform the 8.1 upgrade (it will reboot 3-4 times doing the upgrade).
- Test your newly upgraded Windows, then use the Boot Camp control panel to switch your boot drive back to OSX.
- Once in OSX, (or from the Recovery partition, or a separate boot disk), run disk utility and repair the ENTIRE hard drive--not your individual partitions.

After that, Parallels 8 launched and booted my Boot Camp VM just fine (albeit complaining about an unsupported version being installed.)

Best,
Brad
 
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