Using bootcamp partition (question)

I am familiar with Parallels and using the bootcamp partition under virtualization. I have always wanted to know when booting into Parallels or Bootcamp if drivers are re-installed at every boot? I don't want it to slow down my native bootcamp partition. I hope this makes sense. If someone could shed some light on this it would be appreciated...thanks.

 

Drivers are not reinstalled at every boot. Parallels virtual machine and your Mac may require different drivers but they can exist in your Windows folder at the same time.

It's like in Mac OS X where you have kernel extensions in /System/Library/Extensions/ but they are not all used on all Macs all the time. For example, there are drivers for ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards in my extensions folder but only the ATI driver is used because I have an ATI card.

Hardware devices are displayed in the Device Manager. Devices that are not currently connected are hidden. This means that Mac hardware will not be listed while you're running Parallels and vice versa (except non-Plug and Play devices). There's a way to show hidden devices: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315539. When I show hidden devices on my Boot Camp partition, I see hardware from an iMac where the Boot Camp partition originally came from, and also hardware from my Mac Pro. It even has hardware from old versions of Parallels. The hardware is greyed out (ghosted) because it's not in use while I'm using Parallels. The connected Parallels hardware is not greyed out.

For example: when I show hidden devices while using the Boot Camp partition in Parallels, I see under Display Adapters the following devices:
ATI Radeon 4800 Series (Mac Pro's graphics card - disconnected)
Parallels Video Adapter (Parallels graphics card version 5.0.9370.0 - connected)
Parallels Video Driver (old Parallels graphics card version 3.0.5584.0 - disconnected)
Radeon X1600 (iMac's graphics card - disconnected)