Running Windows on a Mac: A Switcher's Guide

Anyone have any luck with Darwine or CrossOverMac?

trpnmonkey41 said:

No. Bootcamp actually creates a partition on your internal drive. Parallels creates a virtual hard drive (it shows up as a file of whatever size you set windows to have) wherever you want it (Can store the vhdd's on external which is nice) but they definitely can't run off of a single install

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I'm a bit confused here. I'm about to install bootcamp and XP serv pac 2 on my IMAC to be able to run Sims Games, and was told that if I install my copy of Windos Office, I'd be able to run that through Parallels.......(according to my Apple reseller)...

PS I'm a 15 yr Microsoft and 3 day Mac user

confusion re: bootcamp & Paralleles

.....

as i understand it from stuff i've read on this site...

a "lighter" program like office (ha! first time i may have actually used that adjective to describe office), parallels should run fine. for something more intense like a game, bootcamp may be the better option as you're not running an os on top of another os.

imanoone2u said:

I'm a bit confused here. I'm about to install bootcamp and XP serv pac 2 on my IMAC to be able to run Sims Games, and was told that if I install my copy of Windos Office, I'd be able to run that through Parallels.......(according to my Apple reseller)...

PS I'm a 15 yr Microsoft and 3 day Mac user

Click to expand...

My post was from long before Parallels made any mention of being able to use the BootCamp partition. you now can use the Boot Camp partition and run it through parallels

Not sure if I can do this legaly or not however I have a copy of my legitimate XP Home disk with SP2 on it, I know I have used this same disk for many PC's but with the relevant serial number for the relevant machines.

It will work with a Windows XP SP1 serial.

I assume I am okay doing this as the disk is useless without a serial.

when i boot up on to windows from bootcamp, will my pc run as fast as a 1.4 ghz mac or a 1.4 ghz windows ?

You can't use Bootcamp on the powerpc processors

trpnmonkey41 said:

You now can use the Boot Camp partition and run it through parallels

Click to expand...

If I already have Boot Camp installed and already have a Parallels VM set up running its own instance of WinXP, is there any way to recover the lost HDD space by changing my Parallels VM to use the Boot Camp installation?

Also, my Boot Camp install was done on an NTFS partition; I assume I'd have to change that to FAT32. Is there a simple way to do so without having to re-install WinXP on the Boot Camp partition?

The new beta of Parallels will use the Bootcamp partition...

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/beta_testing/

Very useful guide, thanks for posting. I use Parallels myself.

I'd make 2 comments, which are only my opinion.

For Parallels, you don't need 'a lot' of RAM, just 1 gig is fine, which nearly all new Macs come with now. You can dictate how much RAM and HDD space to give Parallels and Windows XP can run happily with 256MB or 384MB of RAM if you're only using a small application. Mine's set to give up 384MB of RAM and as long as OS X is not doing anything strenuous, it's fine. You might also want to add that a disadvantage is the graphics are emulated through OpenGL, so anything using DirectX will either be very slow or not work at all. This may be addressed in future.

As for Crossover, one huge disadvantage you missed is compatibility. Many programs simply don't work and it's not that user friendly. I installed Money 2004 and it worked (just) with some bugs and looked awful - it can also be a lot slower than apps running under either Bootcamp or Parallels.

timboellis1 said:

Not sure if I can do this legaly or not however I have a copy of my legitimate XP Home disk with SP2 on it, I know I have used this same disk for many PC's but with the relevant serial number for the relevant machines.

It will work with a Windows XP SP1 serial.

I assume I am okay doing this as the disk is useless without a serial.

Click to expand...

I did the same, windows XP home edition SP2 but it belonged to a compaq laptop.
I installed on a Windows computer, registered it with the correct codes, and then the pc crashed...... (motherboard failure), hence me buying the Mac.... I put in bootcamp and tried to install the same XP version and it knocked me back saying "allready used on a desktop, call microsoft in your country...." did so and got a new set of numbers (36 in total) without ANY questions asked.... so.. I guess it is legal.

ps, thanks all for responding to my previous question.

ok, i installed parallels, I have a few questions.

1) I had boot camp installed already. Should i get rid of the boot camp now that i have parallels?

2) I gave 30GB space to windows in bootcamp. How much space does parallels give to windows ? (or does the fact you can share files between the two systems means it does not matter about space size)

3) when I went to activate my windows copy in paralles I was told that the number of times i could activate a copy was up. Does this mean i have to go to bootcamp to deactivate my copy and then go to parallels to activate it or am i shagged?


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I have a few questions about bootcamp. My boyfriend has decided to switch to mac due to constent viruses on his PC. He has alot of PC games (not online games) so is interested in a Mac as long as the PC XP games will run fine in the bootcamp xp. Will things run smoothly as if he was playing them on a PC?
Also if he used OSX for internet is there a way viruses could effect the Window XP side of the HD?
What Ram and processor would people recommend? he is interested in the mini mac, would this be powerful enough?

ok sarah,
PC games can be played in bootcamp. no problem. PC games will not run so well in paallels. Bootcamp is just like a PC, really.
If you are on the internet in the mac osx your windows will not pick up any viruses ( although nothing is 100% in life, mac is safer) But if you are on the internet in windows your computer can pick up viruses more easily and thats bad for everything, your mac and windows.

I dont know if mac mini is good enough, sorry cant help you here, But if i were to guess i would say no it is not good enough. i could be mad wrong. I a mac user 6 weeks now, i left windows, but i never cared for pc games. i use xbox and playstation.

Is there anyway to take a parallels virtual hard disk file and turn it into a separate partition for use in bootcamp?

Noobie question
I installed Parallels on my macbook and was wondering do i need to have an antivirus program installed with the windows OS running?

Hi,

I am a nem member. I have some questions. I am not a mac user (and have never used before) but going to buy mac pro as soon as possible.

I have 3 more HDD (use in PC) and when I buy mac pro I will plug them. Can I use second HDD for windows?(using bootcamp) I mean
1st HDD - MAC OS
2nd HDD - Windows XP - SP
3rd HDD(NTFS) and 4th HDD (NTFS) - my mp3s


Also one more question 3rd and 4th HDD are NTFS format Can use them in mac os x ? Because I want to use them both in mac os and windows..

Thank you very much I learned many things in this forum !!

Kelmel, you can use an NTFS formatted disk in both operating systems, but OS X can only read an NTFS disk, not write to it. I would recommend formatting the 3rd and 4th disks in FAT32 so you can have read/write abilities in both OSes. The only drawback of FAT32 is there is a limit on individual file sizes; I believe it is 4GB, which may be a problem if you do video editing (plus it's an old file system). Alternatively, what I did with my 320 gig external drive is make three partitions so I can use native file systems for each operating system: one in the Mac OS Extended format (HFS+, non-journaled), one in NTFS, and one in FAT32. That way, I can use native file systems for both OSes and use the FAT32 space to transfer between them (i.e. a temp space). Windows will not see your Mac partition at all, but you can still copy files from the NTFS partition to the HFS+ Mac partition with OS X. Good luck on your Mac Pro purchase, the new octo-core setups look INSANE!

One more thing, I don't think it was mentioned, but VMware Fusion is an excellent free alternative for virtualization. I use it to run WinXP Pro and Ubuntu 6.10 on my MBP and I really dig it. They just released the 3rd beta of it and it runs quite fast and even has experimental DirectX 8.1 implementation. For experiment's sake I also ran Puppy Linux, **** Small Linux, and Windows 98SE on it and they all worked just fine! Check it out:
http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/