WinXP & Win7 inside OSX?

[Allan in T.Dot]

Hi everyone,

tried searching for this and haven't been able to find a good response.

Heres the scenario:

I have a Windows XP installation that I re-install as needed using winclone because of the proprietary software. Look at it this way, the 1+ hour it takes to install if windows ever crashes is a PIA.

I also want to be able to run Windows 7 - not concurrently as XP.

Question:

How can I have both windows os's installed on a mac system? I know how to install XP via bootcamp and run it via bootcamp or vmware, but can I also install Win7

Oh, as an aside, I know I can run Windows XP mode in Windows 7, but again the problem is that I need to use that particular winclone backup. If you know of a way for me to run that backup inside Windows 7...you are the King/Queen.


Thanks for your help!

 

[sjinsjca]

I have multiple virtual machines set up in VWare Fusion.

All day long I'm hot-keying between Win 7, Win XP, various Linuxes and OS X. My Retina Macbook Pro handles several running at a time without even wheezing.

So that would seem to be the way to go for you. You can have VMWare take a snapshot to revert to a previous state anytime. Other alternatives: Parallels, and the free VirtualBox from Oracle.

I even have a NeXT VM! Kinda useless... but fun. It's so intriguing that it doesn't even have a browser! We regard NeXT as so ahead of its time, and it was, but we take so much for granted today.

 

[xArtx]

I even have a NeXT VM! Kinda useless... but fun. It's so intriguing that it doesn't even have a browser! We regard NeXT as so ahead of its time, and it was, but we take so much for granted today.

Is the X in OSX the same X in NeXT?
Because I heard in the Jobs movie they started with the NeXt OS when
Steve came back.
What's the ahead of time part?

 

[sjinsjca]

Is the X in OSX the same X in NeXT?
Because I heard in the Jobs movie they started with the NeXt OS when
Steve came back.
What's the ahead of time part?

The "X" is kind of cool, but it is actually the Roman numeral for "ten".

The previous, pre-Steve's-return operating system was MacOS 9.

So... ten. And those-in-the-know pronounce it "Oh Ess Ten" not "Oh Ess Ex". I personally think the latter is cooler, but there you go.

The graphical user interface for NeXT's OS, NEXTSTEP, was quite different from OS X's. Here are a couple screen shots. Note the cheesy "home" and "folder" icons... Steve's rare lapses of taste didn't begin and end with Game Center!

 

[Allan in T.Dot]

I have multiple virtual machines set up in VWare Fusion.

All day long I'm hot-keying between Win 7, Win XP, various Linuxes and OS X. My Retina Macbook Pro handles several running at a time without even wheezing.

So that would seem to be the way to go for you. You can have VMWare take a snapshot to revert to a previous state anytime. Other alternatives: Parallels, and the free VirtualBox from Oracle.

I even have a NeXT VM! Kinda useless... but fun. It's so intriguing that it doesn't even have a browser! We regard NeXT as so ahead of its time, and it was, but we take so much for granted today.

Hi sjinsjca,

That's really good know. How did you install both Windows OS's? I know how to install WinXP using the bootcamp method. Do I do the same for Windows 7 as well? Thanks!

 

[sjinsjca]

Hi sjinsjca,

That's really good know. How did you install both Windows OS's? I know how to install WinXP using the bootcamp method. Do I do the same for Windows 7 as well? Thanks!

VMWare Fusion is a virtual machine ("VM") platform. You can create "virtual" computers the same way you create a word-processing document: you start Fusion, tell it to create a new VM, answer a few questions, perhaps insert an installer CD containing the OS you want to install or point it to a CD image, and it installs the OS just as if you were installing it on a physical computer. After that, you can run that virtual computer anytime without leaving OS X. If your Mac is of recent vintage with an i5 or i7 processor, a fast disk and lots of RAM, you can run more than one VM at a time, switching between them the same way you'd switch between browser windows. Install "VMWare Tools" and you can drag items from one VM to the other and to the Mac, and vice versa.

The process with Parallels and VirtualBox is similar. VirtualBox has the advantage of being free and works well for most people. It's not as polished and easy, though. But since it's free, I'd suggest maybe trying that first. (The others offer free trial periods too, I think.) Download VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org ...for VMWare Fusion, try http://www.vmware.com

For migrating from a physical PC to a virtual one, VMWare and Parallels offer a migration tool so you can easily create a clone of the PC you have. Not sure if VirtualBox does the same-- perhaps someone who uses VirtualBox more than I do might chime-in on this thread. You may already possess an acceptable clone via that reinstall tool you mentioned earlier.

This whole process is very different from Boot Camp. Boot Camp is a dedicated partition on your hard disk. At start-up, you have to choose whether to run OS X or to boot your Boot Camp machine; only one can run at a time. This is very different from a virtual machine, which runs inside OS X in its own window (which can be full screen), just like any document. Other differences include those snapshots I mentioned, the ability to revert to a previous state, and the ability of Time Machine to back up your VMs... Time Machine does not see or touch your Boot Camp partition, which a lot of people don't know until too late! But since a Boot Camp installation runs with 100% of your Mac's horsepower instead of sharing it with OS X and maybe other running VMs, the Boot Camp approach is preferred by gamers who need every bit of compute and graphics power. On today's Macs, however, VMs run extremely fast, near-native speeds in fact.

Just be sure you have enough disk space and RAM. VMs don't run well on a minimally configured Mac with (for example) only 2 or 4GB RAM.

 

[Siggen]

Is the X in OSX the same X in NeXT?
Because I heard in the Jobs movie they started with the NeXt OS when
Steve came back.
What's the ahead of time part?

Steve is the key feature here yes.
But NeXT is a play on words. And in OS X, X means 10.
However there used to be a substantial amount of NeXT code in OS X.
Today the major remnant of NeXT in OS X is the language OS X is programmed in. Which is Objective-C. A benign example of this is that to echo text in the command line (used for debugging) you use the command NSLog. Where NS stands for NeXT Step.
The biggest feature (for me) in Objective-C is the substantial amounts of Libraries and methods and such that comes with the extra frameworks, and those are filled with these "NS" commands.


My opinion to the original question:
I am almost a Parallels evangelist, I think I buy every other update for it. It is a truly awesome way to boot into Windows without rebooting. And what really got me going is that if you install windows correctly you can combine using Boot Camp and Parallels in a really seamless way.

So for most reasons I just use Windows in Parallels, even somewhat demanding games, run fine on lower settings in Parallels. And when I want to play more demanding games, I just reboot into the same Windows instead. Parallels takes care of not ruining your activation of Windows or Office. And you get better Harddisk speed than simply making a virtual disk.