This is just a bit of a warning for anyone who is curious about this scenario. I had some really nasty problems today when trying to use Parallels 3.0 to boot a bootcamp Vista x32 install. I've had Vista working nicely in bootcamp for months now, minus the intensely annoying screen brightness sound problem (STILL unresolved Apple, come on). Info Here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6849995&tstart=0
I tried to boot my bootcamp Vista partition using parallels today, which APPEARS TO BE 100% supported by parallels when you start it up, only immediately it wiped out some core windows system files and I started getting a boot up error. I don't remember the exact message now but it had to do with HAL.DLL being missing or corrupt. Stuck at the text portion of bootup before the GUI kicks in.
I couldn't fix it, so i popped in my vista original CD as recommended by Vista to repair the bootup problem. After 3 consecutive CD boots and performing the system repair function, Vista appeared to begin booting again, only the boot sequence is corrupted now and blue screens with an error about BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER.
At this point its pretty much time to throw in the towel, i don't have any USB devices plugged in or installed and the Vista original CD probably restored some non-mac hardware compatible drivers which are now blowing up on boot. 3 seconds after the blue screen the system automatically restarts.
The one saving grace is that MAC OS X can still read the windows partition so I can save out any files before blowing away the partition. Horrific experience though, CLASSIC Windows frailty leaving people stranded, compounded by an apparently awful bug / problem with parallels using bootcamp Vista partitions. BEWARE of even trying this configuration. Even attempting to boot a bootcamp Vista partition ONCE in parallels 3.0 can cause this.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6849995&tstart=0
I tried to boot my bootcamp Vista partition using parallels today, which APPEARS TO BE 100% supported by parallels when you start it up, only immediately it wiped out some core windows system files and I started getting a boot up error. I don't remember the exact message now but it had to do with HAL.DLL being missing or corrupt. Stuck at the text portion of bootup before the GUI kicks in.
I couldn't fix it, so i popped in my vista original CD as recommended by Vista to repair the bootup problem. After 3 consecutive CD boots and performing the system repair function, Vista appeared to begin booting again, only the boot sequence is corrupted now and blue screens with an error about BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER.
At this point its pretty much time to throw in the towel, i don't have any USB devices plugged in or installed and the Vista original CD probably restored some non-mac hardware compatible drivers which are now blowing up on boot. 3 seconds after the blue screen the system automatically restarts.
The one saving grace is that MAC OS X can still read the windows partition so I can save out any files before blowing away the partition. Horrific experience though, CLASSIC Windows frailty leaving people stranded, compounded by an apparently awful bug / problem with parallels using bootcamp Vista partitions. BEWARE of even trying this configuration. Even attempting to boot a bootcamp Vista partition ONCE in parallels 3.0 can cause this.