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OnTheKeys · May 13, 2008, 06:19 PM

I know that with Boot Camp you have to create a partition, I just upgraded to Leopard and I already owned a copy of Parallels. If I install XP with Parallels, will Boot Camp be able to recognize it and boot with that OS? I want to use both, but not have 3 OS's on my Mac...

ghporter · May 13, 2008, 06:27 PM

Actually, it works the other way around. You create a partition with Boot Camp, install Windows in it, and THEN Parallels can see and use that partition to create the virtual machine. It works quite well-I do that on both my MBP and iMac.

OnTheKeys · May 13, 2008, 06:29 PM

Interesting, I'm going to do that.

ibook_steve · May 13, 2008, 06:32 PM

I think your confusion is between a virtual machine and a Boot Camp (BC) partition. This has been discussed before but I'll summarize.

Boot Camp is a separate partition on your hard drive. You can boot your Mac from the BC partition to have your machine basically be a full-fledged Windows PC.

With virtualization software (Parallels or Fusion) you can boot into Mac OS X and then boot into Windows using the Windows installation found in the BC partition (obviously the BC partition and Windows installation must be set up and installed first). Or, you can create a virtual machine (VM; a virtual hard disk you can see in the Finder as basically a hard disk container) and install Windows on that to run with virtualization software.

What you cannot do is boot into BC and run from a VM. A VM is a Mac file format, not Windows, so it can only be run from virtualization software.

There may be links around about converting a VM into a full fledged Windows hard drive partition, but I haven't seen that.

Steve

ibook_steve · May 13, 2008, 06:33 PM

Glenn beat me to it. And much more succinctly, I might add!

Steve

mduell · May 13, 2008, 09:31 PM

Originally Posted by ibook_steve

I think your confusion is between a virtual machine and a Boot Camp (BC) partition. This has been discussed before but I'll summarize.

Boot Camp is a separate partition on your hard drive. You can boot your Mac from the BC partition to have your machine basically be a full-fledged Windows PC.

With virtualization software (Parallels or Fusion) you can boot into Mac OS X and then boot into Windows using the Windows installation found in the BC partition (obviously the BC partition and Windows installation must be set up and installed first). Or, you can create a virtual machine (VM; a virtual hard disk you can see in the Finder as basically a hard disk container) and install Windows on that to run with virtualization software.

What you cannot do is boot into BC and run from a VM. A VM is a Mac file format, not Windows, so it can only be run from virtualization software.

There may be links around about converting a VM into a full fledged Windows hard drive partition, but I haven't seen that.

I don't mean to pick on you in particular, but it seems that there is a lot of confusion about what Boot Camp is.
Boot Camp is a utility that helps you put Windows on Apple hardware; the three major parts are non-destructive partitioning software for OS X, an EFI CSM loader for OS X, and a driver package for Windows. Boot Camp is not a partition, nor is it running when Windows is running on a Mac.

A virtual machine that uses a disk image file for storage is not OS specific, but rather specific to the virtualization application you're using. VMware and Parallels both have their own formats, and I believe they work across OSs as long as you're using the same application.

ghporter · May 14, 2008, 08:54 AM

mduell is correct-and he points out a distinction I have frequently discussed here: Boot Camp is a utility that makes a partition for you to install Windows in. It also provides Windows drivers for your Mac hardware. However, it's become common to refer to this Windows partition as "the Boot Camp" partition, and like it or not, I think that name is going to stick. It causes plenty of confusion but that's what the terminology seems to be heading for.

ibook_steve, you very nicely pointed out something I left off-that Parallels (and Fusion) are OS X apps that let you run a virtual Windows installation, while you BOOT into Windows natively using that partition you created with Boot Camp. You cannot do both, because the computer can only run one OS at a time-with the virtual machines being OS X apps, of course.

Geez! This is WAY more complex verbally than it is functionally. If you want FULL access to all the hardware and connections on your Intel Mac, BOOT into Windows. If you want to run some Windows apps and don't need all the hardware and connections to run natively, then go for a VM application.

ibook_steve · May 14, 2008, 11:40 AM

mduell, I was trying to explain it as easily as possible to the OP. All they care about is how they will run Windows. Describing it as the "Boot Camp partition" created by the "Boot Camp Assistant" and booting into the "Boot Camp partition" and what you can do when you do that with virtualization seemed to be the way to go.

Steve

OnTheKeys · May 18, 2008, 03:46 AM

Well i've been working on getting XP Pro w/SP2 to install for a couple days now, looking through forums etc. and I get the "black screen of death" after the files are copied to the partition.

"No bootable Device.
Press any key to restart"

Even if I change the default boot disk to Windows it does the same thing.

I tried Boot Camp Assistant to run the installer again, but it says I already have another OS on this partition, so I installed it anyway, and still the same thing.

I need to install it first with boot camp then parallels, but it's not working so I don't know what to do.

ghporter · May 18, 2008, 09:22 AM

Use the Boot Camp Assistant to delete the Windows partition. Boot from your OS X disc and use Disk Utility (under Tools) to repair the DRIVE (not just the disk-it makes a difference). Now restart into OS X and use the Boot Camp Assistant to create a new partition, and without stopping or doing anything else first, install Windows. Right then.

It sounds like your Windows disc is working, but the initial install process is not setting up the boot record correctly (or at all). Windows XP has to fiddle with the boot record to make the machine boot into the XP partition at least once DURING the install process so it can go from the command-line interface to the GUI. If it's not booting and giving you the "no bootable device" error, then this very early step isn't going correctly, and the best thing to do is start from scratch.