Can I use VMware Fusion, and still use Boot camp?

Hi there guys!

I have installed Windows Vista Home Basic on my Mac, using Boot camp so I can dual boot. I was watching a video recently about what VMware Fusion can do, and it looks pretty good to be honest.

There is just one thing that I would really like to know before I think about purchasing it to run my Boot Camp Partition as a virtual machine.

>> If I use VMware to run my Boot Camp partition, will I still be able to
natively boot back into Windows when I like using Boot Camp?

>> Also, will I have to reactivate Windows every time I start up Windows in
VMware?


Thanks in advance guys,
Any help greatly appreciated.

Also, is safe to run windows using VMware. Because I heard that viruses and bugs can jump from Windows to Mac OS X while using Fusion/Parallels. They wont affect the Mac, but will they still be lurking around in the system somewhere?

I don't use Fusion but I have seen many people on the forums here recommend that you don't use Fusion with your BC partition because of DLL errors. You would be best to stick to one or the other.

I agree with Van. But if you want to try out running Vista in Fusion.... download the trial version of Fusion and create a NEW VM of Vista - do not use your BC partition as a VM.

That will give you considerable time to activate the new installation of Vista and also to try out Fusion.

Regards.

One piece of advice I saw someone else here give to another user was to install Vista into a VM, activate it, install patches and such and then copy the VM to an external. This way, if something goes horribly wrong with your VM, you can just copy the old one back as opposed to having to reinstall and reactivate.

That's actually a very common way to backup VM's; to backup the vm description file and the virtual hard drives so if the computer fails you can transfer the vm quickly to another machine and be up and running.

Thanks guys.
I think that gives me enough info, and after that I think that I probably wont install Fusion because I do love the ability to dual boot and disregard a certain OS whilst using another.