"Use Boot Camp" option grayed out

Possible Solution to "Grey Out" for "Use Boot Camp" partition

I was able to by-pass the "Grey Out" problem using custom installation (XP Only). Follow the custom installation steps; when asked to select a virtual hard disk option, select the "Do not add any hard disk" option. Toward the end of the OS Installation Assistant, under "More Options" deselect the checkbox "Start Windows XXX installation" since we don't need to reinstall windows.

After clicking "Finish" go back and edit the Virtual Machine and add a "Hard Disk" to the VM. Follow the "Add Hardware" steps and point it to your Boot Camp Partition.

=======

Not sure if this is part of the cause, but discovered this by accident. I have reinstall BC several times and have notice that the partition schema created by BC should not be modified. During Windows installation, I had deleted the Windows Partition and recreated in hopes of claiming the unused space created by BC; after this Parallels no longer sees the BC partition and I get the "Grey Out" problem.

Boot Camp default partition schema is the following for me:

{ GUID Table } | { Mac } | { Unallocated } | { Windows }

Going to reinstall BC later, will post any updates here.

 

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but sometimes a VM option gets grayed out just because there is another "instance" of Parallels that has already designated that setup as one that it is using. It seems like even if you have only one copy of Parallels installed, it may multi-launch itself to work with multiple configurations. So, for example, if there is an alias on your desktop that is linked to your Boot Camp VM, you might have to use that instead of the regular Parallels icon you've been clicking on.

 

Seems that when I do as you say, I still have only a greyed out "Use Boot Camp" option when I try to "Add Hardware." My only valid options are to Create a New image or to Use an Existing Image.

Was it somehow no longer greyed out for you at this step, or am I just in the wrong spot?

 

And, in case it helps:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: type name size identifier
0: GUID_partition_scheme *93.2 GB disk0
1: EFI 200.0 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 52.0 GB disk0s2
3: Microsoft Basic Data SHARED 22.0 GB disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data Windows XP 18.8 GB disk0s4

 

can somebody post their .pvs file in text format that contains a valid working boot camp hard disk configuration? maybe we can hack in recognition for a drive that isn't detected.

 

Anyone try this feature on Beta3 yet?

 

A Little Closer...

I tried the suggestion of "peterkc" above and created a VM with no hard drive and then went back in after the fact and added the Boot Camp HD. This time Boot Camp wasn't greyed out, but when the VM tried to start up, I get an error message that I'm trying to boot into Boot Camp with an unsupported operating system and that I should press the "OK" button (the only option) to stop the VM. So now it is just sitting there with a black screen in the VM.

Anyone seen this? Any ideas?

 

I have not tried this on Beta3 yet. From what others are reporting, this may have been resolved with the latest Beta.

 

Is this for XP or Vista?

 

not resolved for me in Beta 3. however, i'm using a separate hard disk with XP installed on it, which is outside of the extremely narrow set of configs that the parallels wizard is looking for.

 

Here you go, as requested.

 

I also just tried this method (my earlier post was pre-Beta 3, which is why it didn't work) and although Boot Camp is now active, when I try to start the VM, I get an error message saying:

Which is pretty straightforward (I have a FAT32 and an NTFS parition on my disk), but kind of a bummer.

 

here's the relevant section:

so, the interesting thing is that the location of the boot camp volume is not stored anywhere in this file. I had thought that there would be a line sort of like: "Disk 0:0 image = /dev/disk0" or something like that which could be modified to point to the appropriate disk or volume. However, it looks like instead that the .pvs file just tells the VM code to use a Boot Camp routine in the code somewhere, which would imply that that code is hard coded to work with a very specific Boot Camp volume or partitioning configuration.

If this is the case, then this would seem to be a poor design on the dev's part, because, as they are now experiencing, any config that does not fit their narrow target simply will not work. And as we are finding, there are a multitude of legitimate configurations and scenarios which don't fit that target. It just seems inelegant to hard code something like this.

I wish the devs would respond or acknowledge something on this issue.

 

Nothing works so far

I have iMac 1.83GHz. I tried all the options mentioned above and nothing seems to work. I don't want to start all over by reformatting. Please help.

 

Thanks for the update. Perhaps the solution would be to allow the user to specify the partition that contains the BC install of windows.

*hint hint, developers (throws bone)

 

that's the solution i have been asking for over and over on the beta thread but the dev's have never acknowledge anything about this problem. the only thing they've done is request volume mounting lists. it seems like they want to keep adapting their hard code solution to recognize more configs, but i think the simple solution would be to let the user pick a drive or volume and let the VM try to boot off that. there will always be a config that won't fit the exact profile.

 

My two cents here. My HD is partitioned like this:

disk0s1 - EFI
disk0s2 - JHFS+ DATA (my shared files go here)
disk0s3 - JHFS+ LEOPARD
disk0s4 - MS-DOS (NTFS) WINDOWS
disk0s5 - JHFS+ TIGER

I'm not afraid about the greyed out button. In fact it doesn't happen with my configuration. What I've found is that even selecting boot camp will not allow me to boot the virtual machine. I receive the message "Can't find boot camp partition".

So I reformated my LEOPARD partition (disk0s3) as MS-DOS. And it worked. I was able to boot my VM (Well just a DOS prompt I've installed there just for testing).

That's lead me to the conclusion that the bootcamp option in the config file means disk0s3. That's logical as bootcamp by default creates the Windows partition as disk0s3.

So just like all the people on this thread what I need is freedom to define which partition I would like to point my VM. Is that so difficult?

Another strange behavior I've found and that's no related to Parallels is that we are unable to change the partition type after defining the partition scheme. I mean if I first formatted my disk as MS-DOS I'm only able to erase it as MS-DOS using GUI Disk Util. The same if I formatted it as JHFS+. I'm only able to erase it as HFS+ or JHFS+.

I've played a little more using command line diskutil and it let me erase the volume with other partition types. But guess what? The GUID is not updated. Come on Apple, we need help with this one too!

 

Bootcamp does not like it if any of your internal drive partitions are fat32. reformat any fat32 as hfs or ntfs and you will be able to select your bootcamp partition again.

 

ntfs or fat32 does not matter. did u even read the thread?

 

Thanks for the update esquilo22. Since the GUID is not updated, using it to detect BC was a bad choice by Parallels, but hey... it is a Beta. So, here is to hoping that Parallels will allow the user to select which partition to use as requested eariler by collinong.

Keep up the good work Parallels and keep those builds coming.

For those interested, here are great links about GUID and how Boot Camp works.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/53E19DBD-BB3D-417C-A3C1-1F6172F5ECC8.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table