PC Emulation on Mac

[jd2683]

Hello all. I'm new to this forum, so I'm hoping someone has some advice. Basically my PC broke (broken screen on a laptop) so I replaced it with a MacBook Pro running Lion's latest iteration. The specs are as follows:
4 gb ram, 2.7 GHz Intel i7, 500 gb HD. I removed the hard drive from my old PC and put it in an enclosure to create an external HD. There is nothing wrong with the external HD. The mac recognizes it when I plug it in. The external has Windows 7 installed on it. However, all of my personal files are encrypted and thus the Mac can't access them. I'm wondering if there is a way to mount the existing instillation of Windows 7 on the external in a virtual machine such as bootcamp or parallels? Thanks for your advice.

Jeremy

 

[GGJstudios]

To run Windows apps on your Mac, you need to install Windows via Boot Camp or use Parallels or VMware Fusion.

If you don't have a Windows license, you can use CrossOver to run some applications. Not all Windows apps are compatible with CrossOver. Check their site for compatible apps.

 

[jd2683]

I do have a windows license and valid product key. the issue is I can't do an install from an emulator as I don't have windows disks. I'm not worried about running windows based apps, but the files I have that I need from the windows hard drive are encrypted, and thus I must be able to log into that instillation of windows to access them. I know with Linx Wine you can run a VM from an existing windows instillation on an external hard drive. Is there any such way to do so on Mac?

 

[chainprayer]

I've had the best experience (compatibility, speed) with VMWare fusion. I highly recommend it! It has a great wizard for installing just about any OS. I have DOS and Windows 3.1 for my classic childhood games.

 

[jd2683]

cool. do you have to do a clean install using a VM ware created partition? Or can I mount an existing windows instillation?

 

[maflynn]

cool. do you have to do a clean install using a VM ware created partition? Or can I mount an existing windows instillation?

If can mount an existing installation provided its on a bootcamp partition, i.e., installed on your mac. Vmware offers a converter toolto export a windows system to a vmware system. Here's a URL to see how it works
http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

 

[Dark Dragoon]

How were the file encrypted?
Was it using Windows built in encryption or some other application?