Bootcamp Vista Home Premium Partition Size

[G8AMB]

Hi, I am planning to install Vista Home Premium on a Macbook Pro with a 250GB hard drive. Can anyone offer their experiences over what size partition to make for Windows?

I am thinking about setting it up as 40GB? WIll I regret making it this small after a while?

Also at a latter date I plan to use either Paralleles or Fusion - probably fusion.

Does anyone know of any drawbacks with using a boot camp partition over one created from within Fusion (or Parallels)?

Finally I have an OEM copy of Vista - so I am guessing that the license will block me from installing directly in Fusion/Parallels once I have registered it to bootcamp - anyone have any experience to offer on this?

 

[chscag]

As for the size of the partition to run Vista Home Premium, it depends on what you intend to use Vista for. If you're a gamer and have intentions of installing some of the newer games which take up lots of disk space then maybe 40 Gb might not be enough. However, if you're a normal Windows user (I use that term loosely ) 40 Gb is probably too much. You decide.

Later on if you decide to install and use Fusion you can run your Boot Camp installation of Vista as a VM. The advantage of running Windows (XP or Vista) from its own partition is that it's really running natively just as it would on a PC. Certain software, games in particular that need 3D acceleration and fast graphics run well this way. But may not run at all from Fusion or Parallels - at least with the current versions that are available.

Activation: Vista activation is a bit more strict than that of XP but the basic premise is the same. Once Vista is activated from the Boot Camp partition, you may not be able to activate it from Fusion and continue to run the same copy from BC. There's some pretty good info regarding activation that you can read up on at both the Fusion and Parallels web sites.

I had XP Home SP2 running from a Boot Camp partition and from a Fusion VM at the same time, however, I own two separate copies of XP Home which had to be activated.

Regards.

 

[G8AMB]

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

You mention that you have installed two copies of XP.

Is there a reason why you did this instead of running the boot camp partition within a virtual machine?

 

[Phatpat]

I would say take what you think you need and add 50%. It's a pain to add space to a boot camp partition when you run out.

 

[G8AMB]

Parallels

I have just found a copy of the user manual for Parallels online and it answers my question:-

Limitations for Parallels virtual machines using Boot Camp partition
Parallels virtual machine using Boot Camp Windows partition either as a bootable volume or as a data disk has a number of limitations:
1
It cannot be suspended or paused.
2
Such a virtual machine cannot have snapshots, and the Undo disks feature cannot be enabled for it.
3
Compression or compacting cannot be performed for the Windows on the Boot Camp partition.

Does anyone no if the same is true for Fusion

 

[G8AMB]

Fusion

Found this in the Fusion documentation, does anyone know if the re-activation presents problems with OEM copies of Vista?

NOTE If VMware Tools is not installed, and you reactivate Windows in your Boot
Camp virtual machine, and subsequently boot your Boot Camp partition
natively, you will be prompted to reactivate Windows. Reactivating Windows in
your native Boot Camp partition will result in your Boot Camp virtual machine
requiring reactivation the next time you power it on, and so forth. Installing
VMware Tools solves this problem. If you have VMware Tools installed, you will
need to reactivate Windows only when you first power on your Boot Camp
virtual machine.

Even with VMware tools installed you still need to reactivate once?

 

[Neil321]

Found this in the Fusion documentation, does anyone know if the re-activation presents problems with OEM copies of Vista?

NOTE If VMware Tools is not installed, and you reactivate Windows in your Boot
Camp virtual machine, and subsequently boot your Boot Camp partition
natively, you will be prompted to reactivate Windows. Reactivating Windows in
your native Boot Camp partition will result in your Boot Camp virtual machine
requiring reactivation the next time you power it on, and so forth. Installing
VMware Tools solves this problem. If you have VMware Tools installed, you will
need to reactivate Windows only when you first power on your Boot Camp
virtual machine.

Even with VMware tools installed you still need to reactivate once?

nope shouldn't cause a problem as long as you follow the guidelines,if you go fusion then this is what you need to do ( if running it off a partition )

1. Activate windows under bootcamp

2. Boot,bootcamp volume under fusion

3. Install tools

4. Reboot the vm

5. Activate windows under fusion

If you do run into activation issues you can ring M$ on there toll free number and explain to them that you have upgraded the hardware ( on same machine ) and they should give you a new key