VMWare Fusion + Vista + Bootcamp

[killawattz]

Has anyone tried using VMWare Fusion as opposed to Parallels? Right now I have Vista on my bootcamp partition and Parallels running XP, but I might switch over to VMWare Fusion if enough people say they support it.

Does anyone know if VMWare Fusion supports loading my Vista Bootcamp partition yet?

Thanks

 

[netlover]

Yes it does. I used it for sometime but switched back to XP. The reason is Vista needs lots of resources. You should dedicate atleast 1 GB of RAM if you want it to function fast. Plus VMWare does not support aero glass, and if you access Vista in VMWare, Aero Glass will also be disabled when you run Vista in Boot Camp, even if you run the hardware check again. What I did to get Aero running again is re-installing the BootCamp drivers again.

In conclusion, if you dont care about aero glass, and dont mind waiting a couple of seconds while running a program, go for it. I prefer Vista in BootCamp though. Maybe use XP in VMWare.

 

[voided3]

Hello, I use VMware Fusion with WinXP and 98, Xubuntu Linux, and various other Linux distros. It works very well with XP and, unlike Vista, doesn't require a lot of RAM; you could give it as little as 256mb and it would still run basic apps without much fuss, but as always, the more the merrier. My MBP has 2GB so I usually give my virtual machines between 512mb and 768mb. I haven't tried Vista with it, but given the graphics requirements for Vista, the simpler theme would be your best bet since in a virtual machine setting the graphics hardware is emulated. Also try out Virtual Box; it just came out for Macs and it works very well. Good luck!

 

[moldor]

Hello, I use VMware Fusion with WinXP and 98, Xubuntu Linux, and various other Linux distros. It works very well with XP and, unlike Vista, doesn't require a lot of RAM; you could give it as little as 256mb and it would still run basic apps without much fuss, but as always, the more the merrier. My MBP has 2GB so I usually give my virtual machines between 512mb and 768mb. I haven't tried Vista with it, but given the graphics requirements for Vista, the simpler theme would be your best bet since in a virtual machine setting the graphics hardware is emulated. Also try out Virtual Box; it just came out for Macs and it works very well. Good luck!

I;'ve just installed Vista Ultimate in Boot Camp for the second time *(got a virus on it the first time) and I can't get any of the "neat" things to work, like Aero, iSight, etc... Worked the first time tho....

Also, running Vista under Fusion from the Boot Camp partition is sloooowwwww....

I think I'll go back to XP - only need it for work occasionaly (remote support 24/7).

 

[SammySlim]

No virtualization product (Parallels or Fusion) will allow 3D hardware acceleration, even though they otherwise "support" DirectX. that's why Aero doesn't work (or Compiz in Ubuntu). Vista will run perceptibly slower under Fusion or Parallels (whether off a Boot Camp partition or just in a regular virtual machine) because Vista's resource requirements are much higher and in a virtual machine, you have to share the RAM between Vista and Mac OSX. For XP, that really doesn't matter because it's efficient enough that you don't notice anything. But Vista is a hog, so you do. Vista will run faster natively under Boot Camp but it is stable and runs fine, just a bit slower, under Fusion/Parallels. The key to speeding it up is to allocate the minimum RAM to OSX (use the Settings tab in Fusion) and allocate more to Vista in that VM. And, remember, if you do that, you'll have to be mindful of what you have going in OSX as well.

Cheers

 

[bharath.gct]

Well my case is a bit different. Please help!!. I have installed Vista thru fusion in my Mac. I currently want to have the same vista to be installed thru boot camp as I do not use dual booting frequently. Is it possible to create a boot camp partition with the use of the Virtual Machine that i already have? Also is it possible for me to transfer data between windows and mac in boot camp? I know the files of OS X can be viewed in Windows using HFSExplorer. But is it possible to access Windows partition in OS X? Please help me doing this and also let me know for activation problems.