Bootcamp or VMWare 4 for Windows 7?

[dfine1966]

I have the 2011 27 inch iMac top of the line with SSD + 2 TB HDD and 8 GB memory.

I have Lion on my Mac and had Windows 7 installed through bootcamp. I have purchased VMWare 4 for a very low price from there site, thanks to an extra 20% off code.

I did install VMWare Fusion 4 a couple of days ago and ran bootcamp inside the virtualization, I did not import it. After setting up inside VMWare, 4 cores and 4 GB of RAM in setting, I got a pretty good Windows Experience Score (6.0). I had MacDrive installed before with bootcamp, but had to uninstall it after realizing VMWare Fusion doesn't support MacDrive. It seems it doesn't work inside a virtual machine.

Now here are some of my questions.

I wanted to see how easy it would be to uninstall VMWare and VMWare Tools from the Mac and Windows 7, if I ever had to in the future, to make sure there would be no problems. First up MacOS Lion: It was very easy to delete from MacOS Lion, of course with the help of Pathfinder, finding any left over files that were not inside the app. New for Lion is that there is no uninstall, but just take the app and throw it into the trash.

Uninstalling VmWare Tools from Windows was a different story, it was a nightmare. I did the add/remove of the program, and it uninstalled, but like every uninstall in Windows, folders, files and a lot of registry remained. I tried finding everything, but there was way too many leftover, especially registry. Of course Windows wasn't working well after the uninstall, so I formatted and started over.

First, a quick question about uninstalling VMWARE Tools. Has anyone found an easier way to get rid of VMWare Tools in Windows that will fully uninstall it?

Now the real reason why I wrote this thread:

Which way should I install Windows 7 Pro 64 bit? Should I install it with bootcamp and then let VMWare Fusion 4 run the bootcamp or install it directly in Virtuality by itself? Or I could just run bootcamp, by itself, but it is a pain going back and forth.

It seems it runs pretty fast for both ways, virtually and in bootcamp. I didn't see that big of difference.

I really not sure what is the best way to run Windows. Usually it is a lot faster to run through bootcamp, but I am not sure it really is that big of difference, because the Windows Experience score were similar, with Bootcamp a little higher.

Should I stay with bootcamp or VMWare Fusion 4, or both? I don't do gaming on the Windows side, just some work, run a bunch of programs that are windows only.

Sorry for being all over the board. Just wanted to give some background, and decide what is the best way to run Windows 7.

Thanks.

 

[maflynn]

Which way should I install Windows 7 Pro 64 bit? Should I install it with bootcamp and then let VMWare Fusion 4 run the bootcamp or install it directly in Virtuality by itself? Or I could just run bootcamp, by itself, but it is a pain going back and forth.
.

The advantage of VMware is that you don't need to reboot the computer to use windows. That is leave OSX to use windows. If you find yourself in windows more then OSX or wanting to play games that won't run as well in a virtual environment then bootcamp is your solution. Allowing vmware to use your bootcamp partition is in my opinion the best of both worlds. It gives you access to windows within OSX but allows you to leave OSX and reboot into windows.

 

[tfa8rva]

The advantage of VMware is that you don't need to reboot the computer to use windows. That is leave OSX to use windows. If you find yourself in windows more then OSX or wanting to play games that won't run as well in a virtual environment then bootcamp is your solution. Allowing vmware to use your bootcamp partition is in my opinion the best of both worlds. It gives you access to windows within OSX but allows you to leave OSX and reboot into windows.

I second that! Only issue I ran into was that everything needed to be reactivated when I loaded the Bootcamp partition in Fusion.....minor problem though. Works nicely.

 

[JTravers]

I second that! Only issue I ran into was that everything needed to be reactivated when I loaded the Bootcamp partition in Fusion.....minor problem though. Works nicely.

Did you find that you had to reactivate every time you switched between Fusion and Bootcamp, or was this a one-time issue for each?

Thanks.

 

[maflynn]

One time only, once you get through that, you can boot into windows by way of bootcamp or vmware

 

[wpotere]

Use VMware to mount Bootcamp from OSx (as mayflynn mentioned). Then you will have the best of both worlds. This feature works really well and is very stable.

 

[ramw5p]

So load windows using bootcamp first?

So you guys think the best way to do it is install windows using bootcamp assistant...then add windows...then load VM? I am getting ready to buy windows and am still a little baffled by all this..however i am old and slow, and this is my first mac, sorry, not trying to hijack thread.

 

[wpotere]

So you guys think the best way to do it is install windows using bootcamp assistant...then add windows...then load VM? I am getting ready to buy windows and am still a little baffled by all this..however i am old and slow, and this is my first mac, sorry, not trying to hijack thread.

It depends really. If all you are going to use Windows for is the odd and end program like Access or something of that nature then straight VM will work fine. However, if you plan to do more like game then you will want bootcamp.

You take a performance hit with a VM so you have to figure out how you plan to use it and make a decision from there.

 

[maflynn]

The order doesn't matter when it comes to using Vmware Fusion and bootcamp. Install bootcamp and then Fusion, and Fusion will see the bootcamp partition and ask if you want to add it.

Install Fusion, then bootcamp, when you finish that and boot back into OSX, and start Fusion up it will see the bootcamp partition and ask if you want to add it.

 

[wpotere]

The order doesn't matter when it comes to using Vmware Fusion and bootcamp. Install bootcamp and then Fusion, and Fusion will see the bootcamp partition and ask if you want to add it.

Install Fusion, then bootcamp, when you finish that and boot back into OSX, and start Fusion up it will see the bootcamp partition and ask if you want to add it.

Oops, totally misread that...

Yes, the order does not matter.