How do I use a WinXP Boot Camp partition with Parallels?Now that I have Windows XP installed on my Mac via Boot Camp, I'm wondering if there's any way I can use that same partition for a virtual machine in Parallels? I have read your article about how to install WinXP in Parallels (see: How to install Windows XP on your Mac with Parallels Desktop), but I don't really want to have two 8GB Windows installations, so hopefully there's a better way? The latest release of the slick Parallels Desktop application does indeed support you using a Bootcamp partition as a virtual machine disk within the Parallels application. In fact, there are two ways you can hook in the Boot Camp partition, either as a bootable vm, or as a secondary hard disk on another WinXP vm (that is, as disk "D:" or similar). The former, having a single installation of Windows XP accessible both through Parallels and Boot Camp, sounds like a tremendous capability, so that's what I set up, and here are the exact steps I took... Just about everything happens within Mac OS X, so your first step is to start up Parallels Desktop, then click File --> New.... Now you'll need to choose which type of OS install you want:  Rather than "Windows Express", however, choose "Custom", then choose "Windows" and "Windows XP" when asked what OS you want to install. Next you'll need to specify how much RAM you want to allocate to the virtual machine: like any other Windows installation, the more RAM, the better. I suggest at least 768MB if you can spare it. Next up, you'll see:  You can guess the proper choice here, "Use Boot Camp". Now you'll get to specify what kind of networking interface you want between your virtual machine and your Mac OS X system. I suggest "Shared Networking (recommended)". Then it's time to come up with snazzy name for the new partition:  Okay, so maybe "WinXP (Boot Camp)" isn't the most exotic of names, but at least I'll remember the configuration! That's basically all there is to it. When you first run the new virtual machine, it'll ask that you type in your (Mac) admin password. Not a worry, Parallels is just configuring everything properly. More excitingly, you'll get to see this:  Eventually the warning banner went away and I found that there was some sort of problem and the mouse wasn't working. I simply shut down the vm and restarted it. Parallels warned me that this might be a bad idea, but since I couldn't use the mouse to select "Shut Down", stopping the Parallels vm was my only choice. Fortunately, while it did reinstall the Parallels tools yet again, it worked more smoothly this time and my mouse worked from the very first time I saw an arrow cursor in the vm. Once I went to log in to Windows, however, I got this interesting message:  Next up was yet another error:  I followed directions, waited and left it alone, and a few minutes later it rebooted Windows and other than being cranky about me not yet having reactivated WinXP, it all worked just fine! Here's proof of my WinXP working just fine off the Boot Camp partition:  The final test, of course, is to shut down my Mac and reboot in Windows XP through Boot Camp to confirm that nothing's broken...and... it worked like a charm. Rockin! Now, a few things I noticed: first off, it seems to me that I must have installed the Parallels Tools into the Boot Camp vm at least four times, which is definitely weird. In fact, it appears that you have to reinstall it every time you restart the VM, which is a bit annoying. Further, while most of my apps worked alright, the slick anti-virus program AVG wouldn't work in Parallels mode, though to my surprise when I was booted up in Boot Camp it still worked like a charm. (also AVG does work fine in Parallels with a non-Boot Camp partition, so this is some anomaly of this rather odd configuration) Otherwise, an interesting and reasonably smooth sequence of events, and I hope this illustrated tutorial will help you too configure your Parallels Desktop to work with a Boot Camp Windows XP partition.
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Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader. when i get to the point where i have to selet "use boot camp" then it is grayed out ): I have an error at the last step. When I try to run this vm, a error message appears: Unable to open disk image Boot Camp! I used FAT32 in the Boot Camp. Well i get the "must activeate windows" everytime now. How do I fix this? Doug Posted by: doug at July 16, 2007 9:18 PMI read their user guide, and it mentioned that if you use your BootCamp OS in parallels, you cannot pause, suspend, snapshot, undo disk, or compress/compact the partition. Hi, after I setup the windows, it takes me back to the Windows Installation Boot Menu again. I'm stuck in a cycle. Message: Windows Installation Boot Menu what do you think I should do? Posted by: Michael at January 17, 2008 2:47 PMWhen I get ready to start th vm it gives me an error "can not find necessary drivers to configure your boot camp partition" Help please Posted by: mark Bradford at April 2, 2008 2:33 PMI've got this working nicely now - having installed Windows XP Professional first onto a BootCamp partition... and the using the Parallels installer to create a vm. Thanks for the instructions! Couple of minor issues. Whenever I launch Parallels now, it always says "installing Parallels tools"... and then after 20 seconds or so, let's me log into Windows fine. Is it normal that this will happen every time? I haven't played around with this enough to know whether it only happens if I boot up using BootCamp and then go back to Parallels, or just everytime I launch Parallels regardless. Posted by: Steve at April 11, 2008 12:07 PMHi i have installed windows through bootcamp and then i tryed to use that partition with parallels, but when i launch the vm i have to reactivate windows. My problem is i only have one windows' license and i can't use it again. thanks Posted by: ab!Zmo at April 24, 2008 4:22 PMHEY! Are you the victim of software piracy? Nice WGA in the tray. ;] Posted by: Cory at May 6, 2008 7:59 PMHi...I am having the same problem as Adriel above. The "Use Boot Camp" option is grayed-out. Is there a solution to this? If you answer my question I'll buy you a Chai! Posted by: Steve at May 14, 2008 8:37 PMI cannot access Boot Camp thru Parallels, when I choose Custom and go to the next window, it lists Boot Camp, but it is Grayed Out, so I can't choose it. What am I doing wrong. Pease Help Posted by: Rowland Bullerdick at September 26, 2008 2:22 AMI've read on the web that other folks are having this problem but I wanted to get your take. so far I've yet to encounter a fix. Have MacBook Pro running leopard. Recently had some service done and had to reinstall parallels but before I did I set up the boot camp partition and installed windows XP. (Boot camp partition was not installed at the time it went in for service.)I then reinstalled Parallels and it found my boot camp partition and runs windows fine. So far, so good. However, when I go back and try to run windows nativly in bootcamp by selecting the windows drive option, Windows loads but freezes at the logon screen and won't let me go any farther. Have to power off to get out of it. Tried to boot in safe mode and got the same result. I've tried a number of things including uninstalling Parallels tools to no avail. Also tried reloading boot camp update on the parallels side (since that's the only way to reach my partition) but it encountered problems and wouldn't load properly. Restoring to an earlier date didn't help either. Posted by: Barry at October 22, 2008 12:00 PMAWESOME! THANKS DAVE! Posted by: Shaun at November 18, 2008 7:38 AMHey Dave, I have a question, what if I wanted to the backwards process? In other words, I've had XP running on parallels for quite some time now, and I JUST found out that my computer has boot camp, is there some way I can install boot camp, and choose the virtual machine I have already created? Posted by: Nathan Morier at March 24, 2009 1:15 PMHello I'm having problem with setting Parallels Desktop to use BootCamp partition with WinXP. First I installed WinXP on Boot Camp partition and everything works fine. Then I did everything as this tutorial says, but when I tried to run WinXP through PD it just doesn't start. All I get is a black screen and I can't do anything but close it. Then, after that, I restarted my iMac (20", Intel Core 2 Duo) and selected to run WinXP from Boot Camp, but I saw that some "Parallel Desktop Configuration" Profile automatically selected, and then again - I got black screen, WinXP won't load anymore !! Does anybody have similar experience and how to solve it? I had to reinstall WinXP (with formatting that Boot Camp partition) to make it work again... Thank you, to add a note/question to mz previous comment... is it possible that I crash that Bootcamp WinXP partition while booting it through Parallels because I didn't unmount/eject the WinXP (NTFS) partition before booting it ? thank you, I similarly have Parallels configured to my Bootcamp partition. (in case I'm running Windows software that needs the full memory/processing and so need to boot natively) What's the best solution for backing up both Leopard and Vista? I have a 250 GB external hard drive > 200 GB internal hard drive.I understand Time Machine can backup virtual machines, but would the same apply to the boot camp partition being mounted by parallels? Posted by: Greg at June 3, 2009 11:26 PMi manage to install but when window pop up to key in password...i cnaot type anything Thanks a lot for the guide. Very well written. Easiest one to follow that I found so far. Posted by: R Peter at September 16, 2009 2:41 AMThanks for the article, I wasn't aware you could do this, worked like a charm. At least so far so good. Posted by: Mike Law at October 6, 2009 8:48 PMI have a lot to say, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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