VMware Fusion, Apple Boot Camp, and the ideal dual-boot system
May 26, 2008 by Carlos Eduardo · 4 Comments
Image by Kaustav Bhattacharya via Flickr
I recently upgraded to a Macbook Pro. My wee Macbook was starting to show some serious signs of wear, and well, I wanted to play some games that required a graphics card and my Macbook just couldn’t.
With my Macbook, I had Microsoft Vista running within VMWare. I used to have Parallels at one point, and frankly, the experience is for all practical purposes, was rather similar. It worked alright, but one problem I always had with both Parallels and with VMware Fusion, though, was that I wasn’t able to upgrade the firmware on any of my gadgets. Be it a mobile phone, a GPS watch, or a bluetooth headset, the use of a virtual machine’s USB connection always failed when doing complicated things like upgrades. For those kinds of things, you need to go native, you need to go Boot Camp.
So, with my new Macbook Pro, the first thing I did was install Bootcamp in hopes of finally getting a dual-boot system and without giving up the functionality of either system. In addition, because I already had a VMware fusion license, and because one of the advertised features is that VMware can read your Bootcamp partition and let you use it while in Mac OS X, I felt that I had nothing to lose and all to gain.
I was wrong.
So I started by installing Vista via Bootcamp. I called my friend Jerry to see how much space his Vista install took and he mentioned that with a 20GB partition he had 3GB left after application installs, so I went with 25GB. My hopes were to be able to at least access my files while in either system, and use the Mac OS file system as the main repository, but after some research and failed trial and error tests, Vista only allows the use of NTFS as a file system, which limits your ability to read and write from within Mac OS X. Bummer 1.
Once I got Vista installed correctly, I was pretty impressed with how much faster it felt over using it within Bootcamp. I actually liked how Vista felt and looked, particularly after I got Office installed and things were cooking right along. I knew that I couldn’t write files to the Vista partition from within Mac OS X as per above, but I soon discovered that Bootcamp doesn’t give you a shared folder or something like that to share files with OS X either. Vista is pretty much on its own, all 25GB of my hard drive alone. Bummer 2.
Google to the rescue: I found a neat application called MacDrive which allows you to mount the Mac OS X drive as an additional drive and browse the files. This app saved my life. Now, within Vista, I can see and use my other main ‘drive’ to store files and not use up precious Vista hard drive space.
So I booted back into Mac OS X to see if I could get cross platform access with VMware’s advertised feature of booting into Bootcamp. VMware saw the bootcamp partition right away, booted it up, and started the installation of the VMware tools for compatibility. Once done, things seemed to work.. except.. Vista was not showing up as validated/registered.
Vista (retail boxes) allow you to register the product online. If you don’t it will stop working. For my Fusion bootcamp read to work, Fusion would need to fool Vista into thinking that the hardware has not changed so that Vista wouldn’t want to be reactivated (as if it were moved to a different computer). Simply put, it didn’t work. I had to uninstall VMware Tools from within Bootcamp and remove it from Fusion so that I wouldn’t get un-registered within Bootcamp. Bummer 3.
I can’t say I was unhappy with what I had, though, in spite of the set backs. My dual boot system was nice, even if I had to.. well.. dual boot. So I booted back into Vista just to get that system polished off and tweaked. First line of order was to buy my first anti-virus software product in years.
I did a little bit of research on good and fast and non-slow-me-down virus protection (only) and found that Kaspersky (KAV) was highly regarded, so I decided to give them a shot. I installed the product and was instantly reminded why I hate having to use Windows… wow.. what a long and tedious process… update database, scan files, etc.. all while your system is being taxed. Although KAV didn’t seem to annoy me with tons of security questions, and although my experience with antivirus products after so many years of living in eutopia is essentially nil, it did seem to slow some things down. Whatever.. it’s part of living in the Windows ecosystem. I just need Windows to work long enough for me to use IE for websites that don’t like Firefox, and for Excel spreadsheets.
But of course… in less than 48 hours: Blue Screen of Death
There are only 3 things that are certain in life: Taxes, Death, and the Blue Screen of Death. And that is how I conclude this posting.
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BSOD on Mac normally means you are trying to install the Bootcamp drivers with the wrong disk. Also Kaperspy has some real compatibility issues with Vista and in my experience will destroy your setup.
If you want a good dual-boot system to get things done on Windows, use either Windows XP light (Vista offers nothing worthwhile other than new and exciting ways to waste your time debugging) or give reactOS a try in VMWare.
I ran into the same issue dual booting 10.5.2, and Vista Ultimate through Boot Camp. However, since MOST of my external drives are NTFS, I found two utilities that might help you out… MacFuse, in conjunction with NTFS3G on the Mac side will allow you to read (and Write to NTFS partitions… Pick a spot for your files to land on the NTFS side, and they can be read by both OS’s…
Hope this helps…
Quick and dirty theory, I”m about 90% done testing it, and I think it will work. I come from a windows background, I administer 400 desktop computers and about 15 servers, all microsoft. Bill Gates is my hero, cause he keeps me employeed! :->
So, lets state a few facts to start this though..in semi-plain english :->
1) The mac requires some GUIDblahblah partition to have it boot
2) Mac can read it’s file system, and FAT(16/32) file systems, but not NTFS
3) We MUST have an NTFS file system in order to run Windows.
4)BootCamp only lets me create what looks like two partitions(there really are three when it’s done)
Check it out
First I blew out the whole laptop, so I have an empty hard drive.
1) Install a clean copy of Mac OSx via booting to CD, using the FULL hard drive. (although I have a feeling alot of this can be done at install time, it doesn’t really matter)
2)Load into your fresh copy of Mac, and update it all the way, this way we know we’re using the most current tools, and have enough space to have it up to date when we’re all done
3) Load bootcamp and use it to set the windows partition to less than 32 gigs. The reason I do this, is because any other size was jacking up the install
4)install windows XP on 32 gig partition using the CD
5) install bootcamp onto windows
Reboot and test. Cause I’m no mac expert, and I no nothign about this EFS/GUIblahblahblah partition, and it warned me that I’m going to screw it up, so I want to see if I did.
6) boot into mac, and use the diskpart utility. I used it via terminal, because I’m a windows guy, and GUI’s scare me when messing with hard drive partions. I wanna know exactly what I”m about to screw up, and what exactly I told it to do.
7) repartition the Mac HD to the smallest you are comfortable with. I chose 50 gigs(I have 250 total). So now I have 50 gigs on my mac install, 32 gigs on my windows install, and a ton of missing space.
I booted into windows first, and it loaded no problem, booted into mac, no problem
9) Boot back into mac, and look at the partions again, via terminal. I notice now this Gblahblah partition is liek 200 gigs(ish), so I”m like, well I wanna recover that and make it my special partition…so I “repartition” the MAC os partition(not the G one), because I know it’s where the mac is installed, that other weird unknown partionion I don’t wanna screw up or something. When I repartion the mac partition(now I sound like a windows guy ehh..using different forms of the same word 3 times in the same sentance :->).
ok so I repartion my disk mac install by making it 50G mac, remainder MS-DOS FAT32, and leave my the other two partions alone.
so what next
now I have a disk that looks like this
disk0 Partition 0 = that wierd GUblahblah partition
disk0 Partition 1 = something else..can’t rememer
disk0 Partition 2 = Mac journaled partion with os/x
disk0 Partition 3 = Big empty partition of FAT32(accessible by both operation systems)
disk0 Partition 4 = Windows XP FAT32 partition, with XP installed
Now the problem
boot into windows and get what we call the Blue Screen of Death…your system (windows) is DONE FOR!!! AHH!!..Wait..no it isn’t.
Boot to the windows CD, select repair when it lets you, a black screen comes up asks you to log in…put in your password you set when you installed windows, if you didn’t use a password, just hit enter.
now you’ll get the wonderful c:\ prompt
Type bootcfg /add
it’ll prompt you for some info, the first piece of info is just text whatever you wanna call it…I put in “MartinSoft Windows”(cause my name last name is martin).
the next option wants data, I put nothign in, but you could put in /fastdetect and I think it won’t screw it up. Thats the way it usually is.
ok…so what did we just do with all that?
There is a file in the windows world called boot.ini, this file tells the computer, where the copy of windows is, before windows starts. You have to understand the start order.
Basically, the good thing about windows is, you can boot it into as many different install versions you want, and you can even multi boot the same install, with differnet options.
ok..so boot.ini references the location of the installation by using something called an ARC path(I think that’s what it’s called)…it’s kinda like the way a linux machine works..not sure though
so an arc path looks “something” like this(from memory)
MUTI(0)RDISK(0)Someotherstuff(0)PARTITION(x)/WINDOWS/
ok..so thats cool..if at the command prompt in the recovery console you type the command “type boot.ini” it’ll show you the contents and the ARC paths.
and you’ll notice, there is probably two entries, the one that was created when you first installed windows, and the second one you jsut added…notice something differnet between the two??
Thats right, when you fist installed it, it pointed to Partition(3) and the one you jsut added is Partition(4), so when you repartioned in the mac, it changed the partion number that windows is on, and someone said windows needs to be on the last partion, hence all the bouncing around trying to shoehorn this thing togather.
OK..so now your thinkig, ok thanks for wasting my time genious, but now I”m running windows XP fat32 on a small partion, mac on a small partition and giant partition with nothing…thanks alot
ok…now do this…upgrade your XP install to Vista, and it makes it NTFS I guess, use the giant one in the middle for storage of “extras”, redirect your windows “mydocs” and stuff to the extra drive, and violoa.
this comes down to the fact that I guess vista, as everyone says HAS to run on NTFS, so what, we don’t care, so make it a super small partition… Just cause vista is running on NTFS, doesn’t mean thats ALL it can access. That would be rediculous for microsof to say “you can’t look at files you created prior to vista ’cause they’re on FAT32′…Backwards comaptibilty. The middle partion is just a giant floppy disk :->(super fast too), throw all your data there, install your programs there when you start running low on space for either install(I’d just do it that way to get into the habbit).
Anyhow I’m only to the step where it’s windows XP…I’m going to sevice pack it like crazy over night, and attempt vista tomorow…
I’ll star the blog tomorow and letcha know when it’s done..it’ll look alot better than this~!