WinVista Boot Camp support?

joelwnelson · Feb 27, 2007

I have Windows Vista running under Boot Camp, but I noticed that the latest release version of Parallels does not allow booting Windows Vista from a Boot Camp partition. If I have the proper license, will Parallels Desktop eventually support booting a Vista partition in the virtualized environment?

darkone · Feb 27, 2007

probably when apple does...

jbh001 · Feb 27, 2007

Booting into Vista via Boot Camp partition works as well on a Mac as any other PC even though Apple only officially "supports" XP SP2. The question is: does Parallels Build 3186 finally allow access to a Vista Boot Camp partition? Apple support is irrelevant because it is already there (unofficially).

I haven't been able to test it yet because I haven't been able to get a complete download of Build 3186 off any server yet because they are all swamped.

darkone · Feb 27, 2007

with the complexities of what could go wrong .. for instance, bootcamp might work with vista, but its not fully funtional.. i know for certain the device drivers have issues in vista, I would suspect that Parallels will be hit or miss. if it works, great, if it doesnt its not a suprise.

joelwnelson · Feb 27, 2007

jbh001 said:
Booting into Vista via Boot Camp partition works as well on a Mac as any other PC even though Apple only officially "supports" XP SP2. The question is: does Parallels Build 3186 finally allow access to a Vista Boot Camp partition? Apple support is irrelevant because it is already there (unofficially).

I haven't been able to test it yet because I haven't been able to get a complete download of Build 3186 off any server yet because they are all swamped.

The option is grayed out in the Parallels Setup Wizard.

NoBackUp · Feb 27, 2007

Chaps,

I have this running quite easy actually... I just firsted used the bootcamp partion under XP... also booting from the boot camp patrition directly. Then ran the update under Par, no no issue ... direct or under Par..

Chris Price · Feb 27, 2007

NoBackUp said:
Chaps,

I have this running quite easy actually... I just firsted used the bootcamp partion under XP... also booting from the boot camp patrition directly. Then ran the update under Par, no no issue ... direct or under Par..

Are you saying you installed XP onto Boot Camp, configured it in Paralells, and then upgraded the Boot Camp partition to Vista?

I suspect that wouldn't work... Parallels has to revert XP to older kernels to make it work.

jbh001 · Feb 28, 2007

joelwnelson said:
The option is grayed out in the Parallels Setup Wizard.

I found a way around this. I opened Boot Camp Assistant, left it open, and then started Parallels. For some reason that sequence fixed the Boot Camp option being greyed out. Alas, when I try to start the VM I get the error message "Unable to open disk image Boot Camp" even in Build 3186. Maybe the next build will fix this.