Deleting Windows

alexschieber · Mar 2, 2007

Hey, I installed windows on my mac with bootcamp and have had it for about a month. Bottom line is that Windows sucks and it is too slow, and now i want to delete the windows partition on my harddrive, and I was wondering if someone knew where i could get instructions to delete the partition.

Thanks

eric · Mar 2, 2007

i've never installed bootcamp, but can't you just use the disk utility to reformat and/or resize the partition?

cwa107 · Mar 2, 2007

The Boot Camp Assistant in the Utilities folder will allow you to remove your Windows partition safely and go back to one partition again. Don't forget to reset the PRAM (At boot time, press and hold Command-Option-P-R and wait for the system to make its boot-up tone 3 times). This will shorten your boot up times since it will stop your Mac from looking for the old Windows partition.

alexschieber · Mar 3, 2007

Will i have to backup my hard drive before I do this? Does using the boot camp assistant to delete the partition make it so you have to reformat your hard drive.

cwa107 · Mar 4, 2007

alexschieber said:
Will i have to backup my hard drive before I do this? Does using the boot camp assistant to delete the partition make it so you have to reformat your hard drive.

While you should always backup your data (especially when making changes to partitions), the Boot Camp Assistant will not damage your existing OS X partition.

bobtomay · Mar 4, 2007

That reminds me, have not booted into XP on this machine in a month and 1/2. Might as well reclaim that space myself.

cwa107 · Mar 4, 2007

bobtomay said:
That reminds me, have not booted into XP on this machine in a month and 1/2. Might as well reclaim that space myself.

Ever considered Parallels? The nice thing about running it in a virtual machine is that when you need it in a pinch, you can just leave the machine paused and go right into Windows for a minute and then pause and close it again. It also doesn't take up nearly as much space since Parallels uses dynamic virtual disk files (that is, the size goes up on an as-needed basis).

Now if they just get 3D/DirectX support into their video driver (like the latest VMWare Fusion), Bootcamp will become mostly irrelevant.

blinddevil · Mar 4, 2007

question...

i have xp on another partition via boot camp, i wanna install vista on it, how should i format this partition?

another question...if i decided to run vista on parallels, will it take a lot of space of my mac partition?

thanks

cwa107 · Mar 4, 2007

blinddevil said:
question...

i have xp on another partition via boot camp, i wanna install vista on it, how should i format this partition?

another question...if i decided to run vista on parallels, will it take a lot of space of my mac partition?

thanks

Format it just as you would for Windows XP.

Yes, Parallels can either use your existing partition or create a virtual disk - either way, you will still lose some of the space from your OS X partition.

bobtomay · Mar 4, 2007

cwa107 said:
Ever considered Parallels? The nice thing about running it in a virtual machine is that when you need it in a pinch, you can just leave the machine paused and go right into Windows for a minute and then pause and close it again. It also doesn't take up nearly as much space since Parallels uses dynamic virtual disk files (that is, the size goes up on an as-needed basis).

Now if they just get 3D/DirectX support into their video driver (like the latest VMWare Fusion), Bootcamp will become mostly irrelevant.

Installed Parallels same time I installed Bootcamp. Parallels came off the MBP the next day. Primary uses on my main box are 3D/DirectX and burning DVD's which can't be done in OS X at all while Parallels is running. Even in Bootcamp my main box is between 50% and 100% faster than the MBP for what I do with it. At the same time it's a P4, not a C2D, so not much multi-tasking can be done while recording TV, encoding, editing video or burning DVD's.

Have installed Crossover and the couple of apps that I do use here on the MBP run fine in that. Plus, saves me from having to purchase another copy of XP for this machine. May still decide to do that after Leopard comes out though.

Now in the next couple of weeks will get a 500Gig FW 800 drive for the MBP and put the EyeTV hybrid to work. Then I'll run some more time and quality comparisons for recording OTA HD, editing, re-encoding and burning.

cwa107 · Mar 5, 2007

bobtomay said:
Installed Parallels same time I installed Bootcamp. Parallels came off the MBP the next day. Primary uses on my main box are 3D/DirectX and burning DVD's which can't be done in OS X at all while Parallels is running. Even in Bootcamp my main box is between 50% and 100% faster than the MBP for what I do with it. At the same time it's a P4, not a C2D, so not much multi-tasking can be done while recording TV, encoding, editing video or burning DVD's.

Have installed Crossover and the couple of apps that I do use here on the MBP run fine in that. Plus, saves me from having to purchase another copy of XP for this machine. May still decide to do that after Leopard comes out though.

Now in the next couple of weeks will get a 500Gig FW 800 drive for the MBP and put the EyeTV hybrid to work. Then I'll run some more time and quality comparisons for recording OTA HD, editing, re-encoding and burning.

OK, didn't realize you were running DirectX apps. The latest version of Parallels is a pretty significant departure from the early ones. Do give it a try when you have time to make a comparison.