Jan 26, 2008
Windows Vista Ultimate in Bootcamp and VMWare Fusion Redux
I decided to give Windows Vista Ultimate under OS X 10.5 Leopard’s Bootcamp option one more shot. This also includes integration with VMWare’s Fusion for my particular setup. The machine in question is a relatively new Macbook Pro laptop. It’s got a 2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo processor with 4 GB of Ram and a 120 GB hard disk. I had tried this once before with less than stellar results, but after reading about one of my contacts on Pownce trying it, I decided to use my spare time this Saturday to give it one more shot.
I started by deleting my current Windows Vista VMWare virtual machine and then began the process of setting up Bootcamp. Lucky for me this time went much smoother with the Bootcamp Assistant. It created the 32 GB Partition very quickly and before I knew it I was rebooted into Windows Vista’s installer and was on my way.
The Windows Vista installer, as in all of my previous experience is quick and simple. I don’t have metrics to back it up, but I am almost positive that Windows Vista Ultimate installs faster than Windows 95 did. That’s not too bad for an install that takes up a whopping 10 GB when it’s finished. All in all the install itself takes about 15 minutes.
I only wish that the updates were as fast. Right off the bat I had 44 updates to install. That process took about an hour to complete. Of course that is Internet speed dependant but I wouldn’t consider ours to be slow per the average.
The Apple Bootcamp installer went without fail this time. I was pretty sure that this was the exact reason I had troubles the first time. Oddly enough, the one really annoying problem I had before was that I could not get Vista to assign the laptop a Windows Experience Index score. This time it went without a hitch and I am humming along with a Windows Vista Experience Index of 4.5. The 4.5 is brought down by the hard disk performance specifically, with 3 GB of ram (don’t ask me why Vista won’t see all 4 GB) gave me a 5.1 on memory and the 256 MB GeForce graphics chimed in a speedy 5.9. Pretty respectable scores for a portable computer.
After I had set up the 3rd party applications and anti-virus software I wanted to use, I booted back into OS X to get it set back up in VMWare Fusion again. This wasn’t nearly as straight forward as it could be. Although I had removed the VM partition, the boot camp one was still right where it should be. The only problem was it was showing the old boot camp partition I had created and would not actually boot. There is a good tip here…
Removing the machine from the VMWare Virtual Machine Library is not enough, you have to also delete a Bootcamp file so that the machine will start fresh setting up the Bootcamp virtual machine again. That file is:
Users{yourid}LibraryApplication SupportVMware FusionVirtual MachinesBoot Camp%2Fdev%2Fdisk0Boot Camp Partition
After you have deleted this file, close VMWare Fusion if it’s open, then re-open it. After a few seconds "Boot Camp partition" should appear in the Virtual Machine Library and you can start the setup again. It will boot Windows Vista (or whatever OS you have installed via Bootcamp) and then once it loads it will start installing the VMWare Tools for you. After this is complete you will be set!
Now that I have it set up this way I am quite pleased with the outcome. When I am running in Bootcamp I have a blazing fast Vista machine. When I am in OS X, I can easily read the OS files via the new Vista HD icon on my desktop (If you want to change the name of the Vista partition, simply change it in Windows and it will be changed in OS X) or I can open the machine via VMWare Fusion and use it. When in Fusion I lose Aero and there is an obvious performance loss, but I am writing this blog in Windows Live Writer via VMWare Fusion right now and it’s running along just fine.
A few last thoughts
Why Apple can’t get tap-to-click working in the Bootcamp OS makes no sense to me. The touchpad obviously supports it and every Windows laptop I have ever had supported it also so I know the OS does too. Multi touch obviously works because you can hold two fingers on the touchpad and click the button for a right-click.
I have to say this makes for quite the versatile machine. I can do pretty much anything I could ever need to with this laptop now. In case you didn’t back track through the links on this article, I started with running Windows XP in Parallels. I could not get Windows Vista to install in Parallels. I decided to switch to VMWare Fusion and I could not be happier with it.
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Jason,
thanks for posting this. I was losing my mind after resizing my bootcamp partition, becauseI couldn’t launch vista ultimate via VMWare fusion. Thanks to your post regarding deleting the file in:
\Users\{yourid}\Library\Application Support\VMware Fusion\Virtual Machines\Boot Camp\%2Fdev%2Fdisk0\Boot Camp Partition
I can boot to my 20 GB vista partition. Thanks so much!
-Pete
Not to be exceedingly pedantic, but on a Mac slashes, not backslashes, are needed for its path delimiters:
/Users/{yourid}/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp/%2Fdev%2Fdisk0/Boot Camp Partition
FYI, you’re almost certainly only seeing 3GB in Vista because you installed the 32-bit version. 64-bit Vista would see all 4GB, but I think I read it’s not officially supported in Boot Camp or Fusion or something yet. Translation: it might work, but YMMV.
On a Mac Pro the RAM Problem is even worse. The 32-bet versions of Windows detect only 2GB.
So i installed the 64bit Version of Vista Ultimate. After deleting the configuration files from VMWare everything works fine now.
Great performance via BootCamp and decent performance via VMWare (except for DX3D of course).
Thanks very much for posting this – was just starting to tear my hair out after upgrading my bootcamp installation from WinXP to WinVista.
The advice of deleting the VMFusion virtual partition file worked a treat.
You’re my hero of the day ;o) now to upgrade VMFusion to V2
Hi,
I found your post while searching for the solution to a problem I had when setting up my Windows 7 Boot Camp install to work with VMWare Fusion.
It actually works pretty well, except at some point Internet access in the VM disappeared. Wondered if you’d come across this problem?
Wow thanks a million, your a lifesaver!