deleting boot camp partition through vmware

Hi, i was using bootcamp then decided to install vmware and use it to create a virtual machine of the boot camp partition. i now want to delete this boot camp partition vm and want to create a new vm using just fusion, nothing to do with bootcamp.
as the HD is partitioned in bootcamp, how do i delete it without loosing the hard drive space?
cheers

Why not remove the bootcamp partition and make a new VM instance declaring the same HD space?

Do you want to keep your Boot Camp partition or not? If not, just go into boot camp assistant and restore the HD. Then, reinstall Windows under Fusion using the same disc as you did before, and voila.

If you want to keep Boot Camp but just have a second VM, then just go into boot camp and create a second VM. You can name it whatever you like and it will show up as a second VM in the library. However, you will need to reinstall Windows again (not sure what the Windows EULA license ramifications are if you use the same Windows disc for the second installation). As a result, you'll have two copies of Windows on your HD, one of each partition with a corresponding hit to overall HD space, but that can be modest depending on how large you make your virtual HD on the VM. I do know for sure that if you delete the BC partition you can use the same Windows disc for the new VM with no net loss of HD space.

You can also delete the existing VM from within Fusion by deleting the files (although when I did that, I could not delete it from the library list for some reason).

Cheers

hijacking the thread, kinda..

i was searching and couldn't find a good answer to my question, which is

What is the benefit of deleting your boot camp partition? I can use that to run XP from fusion, and it works. I dont understand why you would need to create a new virtualization.....

Thanks in advance

You don't have to, as you say. The original poster had already made that decision to do that. If you keep your partition, several things happen: (1) that hard drive space is not available to you under OSX, whereas for a VM under Fusion, it is only used while you are running your virtual machine, and frees up thereafter - and the application can be scaled down if you are running out of HD space, so it's more flexible; and (2) there are certain attractive features of Fusion (and Parallels) that are unavailable to virtual machines running off a Boot Camp partition - such as "snapshots" in Fusion, which is essentially the ability to take backups and restore on the fly, kind of like Time Machine. That feature is important to me, as I don't want to waste time if I pick up a bug or problem in Windows - I can just restore on the fly and keep working.

Your call. You should review the Fusion documentation and you will see what features are not available to Fusion running off BC partitions for more details.

Hope that helps.

Cheers