Virtual machine to bootable windows?

C

Colin_Foyle

Bit poster
I have installed Parallels 10, and Windows 8.1 within my Mac OS X environment. I am wondering if it is possible to enable this virtual windows environment to be bootable natively via bootcamp without having to reinstall windows. The reason I don't want to reinstall windows is that it was a download installation, and I am not sure I can create a USB/CD/DVD of the download as I don't think I have the download file (it was an .exe that downloaded the software - I believe).

Thanks.
 
Short answer: No
Long answer: It's actually possible, Parallels doesn't have a tool to automate that, so all the procedures have to be done manually, the process is called 'cloning windows 8 to different hardware' (if you want to google, and yeah, as far as Windows and cloning is concerned, it IS different hardware), however this is a very technical process and you really should know what you are doing.

How to create windows install media from the .exe: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/download-create-bootable-windows-8-upgrade-dvd/
 
Specimen said:
Short answer: No
Long answer: It's actually possible, Parallels doesn't have a tool to automate that, so all the procedures have to be done manually, the process is called 'cloning windows 8 to different hardware' (if you want to google, and yeah, as far as Windows and cloning is concerned, it IS different hardware), however this is a very technical process and you really should know what you are doing.

How to create windows install media from the .exe: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/download-create-bootable-windows-8-upgrade-dvd/
Click to expand...
Thanks... I am a bit of a tech, and understand what you are saying. I believe when you say that it IS different hardware that Microsoft will see that the hardware is different, and won't let me use the same license key for the OS. So, to make it a permanent thing, I'd have to buy another license key. I think I'll give it a go very soon. Thanks again.
 
Actually, that's not everything I mean by different hardware, it also has to do with drivers and the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), simply put, an exact clone of a machine when put into different hardware will not work, it is expecting a specific hardware that is not there. The hardware is different to the machine because the Virtual Environment presents your hardware to Windows in a different manner.
 
There is cloning software out there that automates these procedures (Acronis truedisk?), however, you have to make sure the software supports both cloning to a different hardware and Mac Bootcamp/GPT partition environment.
 
One more thing, You will still need to have Windows 8 installation media, and you will need to download the Bootcamp drivers from Apple, when looking at the new hardware it will need these.
 
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