Installing Parallels and Boot Camp

S

SuzanC

Bit poster
I will be installing Parallels Desktop for the very first time on my Mac Book Pro. I then remembered that the Apple Sales person mentioned that I could have both Boot Camp and Parallels installed. I am not sure if the Mac Book Pro comes pre-installed with Boot Camp.

If it not installed, are there any significant benefits to have Boot Camp installed in addition to Parallels?
 
Parallels, as you know, allows you to run Windows on a MacBook Pro that is booted normally in to MacOs. The parallels Windows environment is distinct and separate from MacOs, but you can share files between them, and usually you can share printers.

Boot Camp, on the other hand, allows you to boot your computer in to Windows as if it were a windows PC. the MacOS is not running at all. You will have no access to your Mac applications while in Windows Boot Camp. You will only have read-access to files stored on your Mac Disk drive; the windows files will be entirely separate. Parallels works pretty well running Windows as a VM, but occasionally there are glitches or incompatibilities. There would be fewer or more likely no such incompatibilities when you boot in to Boot Camp Windows.

You can also run the version of windows you install in Boot Camp as a virtual parallels machine on computers with single internal drives such as the MacBook Pro. this gives you almost the best of both worlds - you can boot in to Boot Camp when you need to, or you can run windows under the Mac OS. If you install an application in Boot Camp, it will also be available in parallels, since they are "the same". There are a few limitations, though. YOu will not be able to make snapshots (backups) of the Boot Camp environment in Parallels, the way you can with a normal parallels VM.
 
Hi,

I have Parallels 5 and windows 7 installed on my new Mac by the store who sold me the computer.
Unfortunately, Boot camp was not installed and I want to add the ability to boot native using windows.
What is needed to be done now? Can I simply install Boot camp and it will use the windows 7 operating system
installed in parallels or do I need to separately install a second copy of windows to use with Boot camp?
If this is the case, do I need 2 separated licenses for windows?

Eran.
 
I didn't do what you did, so I can't answer with certainty. But I believe:

-you will have to install windows a second time, using the boot camp installation procedure. You cannot use an installation of windows in parallels to create the boot camp partition. (you can do the reverse - if you first install windows in boot camp, you can use it as the basis of a parallels VM).

-Windows 7 activation is a mysterious process. I have not used windows 7 for my VM, so I can't speak to it. But, offhand, I think you are allowed to activate windows 7 twice, and I further think that using windows 7 as both a VM and a boot camp partition on the same computer will not violate the MS license. So, I would guess you will have to activate windows twice, but you should be able to.
 
Thanks!

I guess I'll erase parallels vm, install windows 7 on boot camp and reinstall parallels to use it.

Eran.
 
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