Just Discovered Cool Parallels & BootCamp Feature

[~J~]

I just installed a 25GB partition on my MBP for Vista Ultimate... I had previously been using Parallels to run Vista & XP Pro.

So I just opened Parallels to update it... and it popped up and said it could use my 25GB Vista partition! Im sure this is not a new thing... but I just discovered that I can boot into Vista via BC... -OR- use Vista while in OSX via Parallels... from the same partition! This is a VERY cool feature! Just wanted to share it with anyone who may not have already been aware of it!

 

[Eidorian]

I believe this was available back in Parallels 2. I never tried it myself though.

Sadly, old news.

 

[overanalyzer]

I believe this was available back in Parallels 2. I never tried it myself though.

Sadly, old news.

Yep, it is old. I've used it, though it only works for a partition, not a separate physical drive, which is why I had to stop using it on my Mac Pro, where I needed the space of an extra drive.

VMWare Fusion, by contrast, not only has this feature, but can also use either a BootCamp partition or a separate physical drive.

 

[~J~]

Man... any other news & cool features I need to catch up on?!

 

[richard.mac]

i would love to use this feature but after i tried it, parallels killed aero on my vista boot camp partition. i know parallels cant handle aero and when i used vista in paralles it had the basic UI as expected but then when i booted back to boot camp aero was gone and it was gone in the theme options?

has this happend to anyone else?

 

[justflie]

I'm pretty sure Fusion does this also. I have XP on boot camp and can also access it from Fusion in OSX no problem. I would assume that the same holds true for Vista, but I cannot say for sure since vista is a bit of a trainwreck before SP1 is released so I'm not touching it yet.

One great new thing in Fusion is experimental DirectX 9.0c support (no shaders)!!! That's freakin hot. I've used both products but ended up buying Fusion. So far so good I think Parallels is still in DX 8 or so.

 

[webgoat]

are you not getting activation issues with vista switching between bc and parallels?

 

[DoFoT9]

are you not getting activation issues with vista switching between bc and parallels?

sorry to revive an old thread, but is there anyway to do this AFTER you have activated?? i installed parallels the other day and im scared that if i start up the VM it will recognise it as different hardware and whatnot.

 

[JNB]

sorry to revive an old thread, but is there anyway to do this AFTER you have activated?? i installed parallels the other day and im scared that if i start up the VM it will recognise it as different hardware and whatnot.

It's the same instance of Windows, already activated, so if you installed everything correctly, it'll be fine. Only a small percentage of folks have ended up requiring a second activation, and most of those were due to installation errors.