Bootcamp and VMware on rMBP questions?

[ducatiti]

So I was able to successfully install Windows 8.1 thru Bootcamp. I also installed VMware 6 to access this Bootcamp partition in the event I want to run Mavericks and Windows simultaneously.

I just noticed that eventhough Vmware uses the Windows image in Bootcamp, I believe that it is a whole separate entity. Can someone confirm this? I needed to activate Windows 8.1 on both Bootcamp and VmWare separately.

This comes to my main question. If I delete the Bootcamp partition and installation, will I be able to use my Windows 8.1 on Vmware? Or VmWare totally relies on the Bootcamp installation?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Dovahkiing]

Do not delete your bootcamp partition.

In your case, they are the same thing. VMware can run windows in two main ways. Its main way is to create a virtual hard drive, which is just a file on your physical hard drive. When you run windows, this file is the main memeory for Windows. Alternatively, and what you're doing, is VMware can mount your bootcamp partition and load that copy of windows virtually. The advantage here is that you have two ways to run the same windows partition: Virtually or natively.

The reason this requires that you re-activate windows is that when you boot up the partition for the first time in VMware, Windows sees that a lot of the hardware drivers have changed. However, this is still the exact same windows partition that you're using for bootcamp. You just have to re-activate the installation. After you do that one more time, you can run windows in both instances without an issue.

If you want to remove your bootcamp partition and still run windows through VMware, you'll need to re-install windows on a virtual hard drive.

 

[Quackers]

I had this issue too.
In my case Microsoft would not activate both systems. They stated that they were on different hardware so 2 licences needed to be bought. I argued that actually it's the same hardware but they did not budge on the issue.
Other people have managed to get both activated.
I deleted the BootCamp installation and now have just the vm. I had to activate it by phone which went fine.

 

[Dovahkiing]

I had this issue too.
In my case Microsoft would not activate both systems. They stated that they were on different hardware so 2 licences needed to be bought. I argued that actually it's the same hardware but they did not budge on the issue.
Other people have managed to get both activated.
I deleted the BootCamp installation and now have just the vm. I had to activate it by phone which went fine.

This is why you use the automated telephone activation system and answer "one" when it asks you how many machines you're running the copy on. There is no reason to get into the whole story with them if you have to talk to a real person. If they ask, all you're doing is re-installing windows on the exact same machine.

 

[ducatiti]

Do not delete your bootcamp partition.

In your case, they are the same thing. VMware can run windows in two main ways. Its main way is to create a virtual hard drive, which is just a file on your physical hard drive. When you run windows, this file is the main memeory for Windows. Alternatively, and what you're doing, is VMware can mount your bootcamp partition and load that copy of windows virtually. The advantage here is that you have two ways to run the same windows partition: Virtually or natively.

The reason this requires that you re-activate windows is that when you boot up the partition for the first time in VMware, Windows sees that a lot of the hardware drivers have changed. However, this is still the exact same windows partition that you're using for bootcamp. You just have to re-activate the installation. After you do that one more time, you can run windows in both instances without an issue.

If you want to remove your bootcamp partition and still run windows through VMware, you'll need to re-install windows on a virtual hard drive.

Thanks for your input but I think that it a whole different installation. I installed Grid 2 on the Bootcamp side and when I try to run it via VMware, the games or the files I saved weren't in the VMware session.

Can someone confirm that it's ok to delete the Bootcamp partition and still have VMware run the same vm that used to point to the window in Bootcamp.

 

[Snowshiro]

Thanks for your input but I think that it a whole different installation. I installed Grid 2 on the Bootcamp side and when I try to run it via VMware, the games or the files I saved weren't in the VMware session.

When I first installed Parallels and ran the VM using the (Windows 7) bootcamp partition I had to activate twice, but it worked fine automatically. When I did a clean install of Mavericks, I had to activate again, but this time the online activation refused to work. So I called Microsoft, and they gave me an activation code, no questions asked.

Can someone confirm that it's ok to delete the Bootcamp partition and still have VMware run the same vm that used to point to the window in Bootcamp.

No it's not. If you delete the bootcamp partition, your installation is gone. VMWare is just providing a layer that allows Windows to access to your Mac's hardware while OS X is running. The physical files are shared between the VM and Windows running natively in bootcamp. If you don't trust my answer, try installing a program in vmware, and then if you reboot into Windows you'll find it's also available to you. It's the same physical partition and the same physical files. You delete it once, you lose both.

Edit: In full blown VMWare (the expensive version) on Windows, there is an option to clone a virtual machine. I don't know whether the Mac version has this though.

 

[Dovahkiing]

Thanks for your input but I think that it a whole different installation. I installed Grid 2 on the Bootcamp side and when I try to run it via VMware, the games or the files I saved weren't in the VMware session.

Can someone confirm that it's ok to delete the Bootcamp partition and still have VMware run the same vm that used to point to the window in Bootcamp.

Lol. Ok whatever. Go ahead.

 

[T-Bob]

Not tried an emulator in OSX yet. Was going to try parallels trial. I suppose they both allow you to have a Windows app in the dock that you can launch transparently.