some insight...?

I'm a power user, switching from windows to macand I'm wondering if I can just take my windows installation from my PC (the entire hard disk) and install it into my mac (running Leopard 10.5.2)?

and if so, how does it boot?

I'm new here by the way, and I'd like to say thank you for having me here...

any Windows based issues I'll do my best to help...

You mean put the HDD in your mac? You could do.

What you can do is create a bootcamp partition, install windows on one side and have OS X on the other, and boot whichever you need.

Or there's software like VM Fusion or Parallels Desktop to run Windows within OS X.

skaheadpunk said:

You mean put the HDD in your mac? You could do.

What you can do is create a bootcamp partition, install windows on one side and have OS X on the other, and boot whichever you need.

Or there's software like VM Fusion or Parallels Desktop to run Windows within OS X.

Click to expand...

yes, that's exactly it, just to place the entire HDD into the Mac... but then how does it boot and if so, do I still need to run VM Fusion or... Bootcamp or... anything like that?...

I don't really wish to partition my OS X drive to facilitate Windows.

I bought a mac for the future. I'm happy I switched

If you put the actual HDD into the mac it should just boot... I'm sure I've done it before with an XP drive.

What mac do you have? Do you mean having a windows HDD and one with OS X? If so you can select which drive you boot from by hitting the option key on start up.

You'd just be booting whichever OS on it's own - you don't need any more software (so far as I know, I'm no expert) unless you want to boot both at the same time. I think.

Such a configuration likely won't boot, or at least won't boot very well (perhaps only in Windows Safe Mode). Remember, your new Mac is a completely different hardware environment than the PC that hard drive was booting before. None of (or very few of) the device drivers will work. Unfortunately, your best bet is to re-install Windows on the Mac, not attempt to get an old installation running. That is my 2 cents.

mac57 said:

Such a configuration likely won't boot, or at least won't boot very well (perhaps only in Windows Safe Mode). Remember, your new Mac is a completely different hardware environment than the PC that hard drive was booting before. None of (or very few of) the device drivers will work. Unfortunately, your best bet is to re-install Windows on the Mac, not attempt to get an old installation running. That is my 2 cents.

Click to expand...

I'd have to agree with this. Taking a Windows drive and going from one machine to another (unless it's the exact same hardware specs) will generally result in a BSOD or just plain won't boot at all.

Another option is to use Parallels or Fusion to run your Windows installation in a VM. Both programs have a mechanism to create a VM image out of your existing PC and port it over to the Mac. I've heard it works quite well.