Hi, I have a few relatively light-weight Windows-only programs that I need to start using on my Macbook Pro. I'm deciding whether to install them on Bootcamp or use VM Ware Fusion.
How to install Tuxera NTFS for Mac in macOS Mojave. Tuxera Disk Manager is included with the installer of Tuxera NTFS for Mac (version 2015.1 and higher) and can Alternatively, attach the drive to a Windows computer and run ‘chkdsk /f’ on the drive to repair any problems in its internal structures. Jump to Virtual hardware; > - You can also allocate extra memory and disk space, and even increase. Need for a work project, or sharing your music or photo libraries. Desktop floating in its own window on top of the Mac desktop.
A couple questions please. 1) To use Windows with Bootcamp, do I need to install Windows XP on Bootcamp? 2) What is your opinion? Go with Bootcamp, or install a virtual machine? I am aware that Bootcamp requires a restart to return to my Mac - and that programs will work faster on Bootcamp over a virtual machine.
3) But what if I installed BOTH (Bootcamp and a virtual machine using VM Ware Fusion) just until I figure out what I prefer? Does that mean that two separate instances of Windows XP installation will occur on my hard drive? 4) Regardless of whether I use Windows with Bootcamp or a virtual machine, can I save work I've done with my Windows programs in a Seagate external hard drive that is formatted for Mac OS Extended (Journaled)? 5) What is the best way to format an external hard drives that will allow me to read and write with a Mac and a Windows computer?
Thank you very much! 1) Yes, you will need your own copy of Windows. You will need XP SP2 or higher, or Vista, or Windows 7 2) Personally, I like using Boot Camp and prefer the flexibility of booting natively. If you plan to game, that is the only way to go. 3) No, there are not 2 separate installs. Just install through Boot Camp first and have the VM read the Boot Camp partition. It works seamlessly.
4) Yes, you can save your work to an HFS+ (Mac OS drive), but you would either need to use MacDrive (not free) or just clone the drive with 5) In order to read/write to the same drive from OS X and Windows you will need to either format the drive as FAT32 or use NTFS-3G on the Mac side to read write to NTFS drive or use MacDrive on the Windows side to read/write to the HFS+ drive. Check out the various file systems here: will allow OS X to read/write to NTFS (Windows) and it is free will allow Windows to read/write HFS+ (Mac OS X), but it is not free Regardless, back up your data before you begin! Print the Boot Camp Assistant directions and follow them explicitly Woof, Woof - Dawg. 1)Yes, you will need a copy of XP Service Package 2 or higher. I personally would run the because it is free and it has great new features and an awesome interface, compared to Vista or XP. You would have to burn the.iso file from that download to a DVD.
2+3) I would just install XP with bootcamp and then either boot into that partition or use vmware fusion to boot that partition virtually. Make sure you back up before you do this.
Then you can decide if your programs really require bootcamp or you could just follow the video on vmware's website for with the. You could then use that vm created from the bootcamp install instead of bootcamp. If you decide to do this then delete your bootcamp partition to take back that space. 5) Follow MacDawg's instructions. I personally have my cross platform external HD formatted as NTFS and use ntfs-3g on my mac. This is the free solution without having to deal with the limitations of the FAT format.
I already have Win XP (sp2 or maybe its sp3?) and VM Ware Fusion ready to install. A) Regardless of whether I initially install Windows XP in Bootcamp (and maybe install a virtual machine too), would I install all my Windows programs in the same partition that I installed XP in?
And if so, will the Windows virtual machine be able to access those Windows programs from that same partition? B) How large should I make the partition on my hard drive for Windows using Bootcamp?
Can I easily adjust the partition size up or down later? C) Are there any disadvantages to using NTFS-3G over MacDrive?
D) Does using NTFS-3G for a Mac to read an NTFS formatted external hard drive slow down the accessing of files? D) Is NTFS a better format than Fat32? E) The format for my Seagate external hard drive is currently ' Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' and that isn't compatible with Windows. I want my external hard drive to read and write to all these: My Mac, Bootcamp running XP, and a virtual machine running XP.AND.I want my Acer Windows computer to be able to read and write to my external hard drive too. Would reformatting my currently formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) external drive to NTFS be the best way to accomplish this and then install NTFS-3G on my Mac? F) If reformatting my external drive to NTFS is the best approach, would it be okay to copy all the files on my currently formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) external hard drive over to a folder on my Macs desktop - then reformat the external drive to NTFS - and then drag the files on my Mac desktop back over to the newly formatted NTFS external hard drive? Would any of my files get messed up while doing that?
That is a lot. Thanks everyone! I really appreciate your input here because I'm not a big techie kinda human. E) The format for my Seagate external hard drive is currently ' Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' and that isn't compatible with Windows. I want my external hard drive to read and write to all these: My Mac, Bootcamp running XP, and a virtual machine running XP.AND.I want my Acer Windows computer to be able to read and write to my external hard drive too.
Would reformatting my currently formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) external drive to NTFS be the best way to accomplish this and then install NTFS-3G on my Mac? Windows 7 bootcamp partition with VMware fusion Hi All, Im having a small problem. I have installed the Windows 7 RC (ultimate) into a bootcamp partition on my MBP.
During the install I had to reformat the partition to NTFS which I think is normal. I want to now use that partition in fusion to get the best of both worlds.
However vmware does not display the partition in setup menu and i cant mount the drive in osx because its NTFS. The simple fix I assume would be to install something like NTFS-3G, but I wanted to check if fusion does not already include an NTFS driver in its binary, this would make sense since all future versions of windows will be NTFS only. If this is not the case then would NTFS-3G be the way to go? May seem like a obvious question to some but I just need clarity and to make sure I haven't corrupted the NTFS partition in some way.
Cheers, James. I finally installed VMWare Fusion with XP SP3 on my Macbook Pro (2.5 Intel Core Duo 2 with 6 gigs of ram) and everything seems okay. Then I installed XSitePro2 (which is a Windows-only website building program) on the Windows side and when I click on the XSP icon to start the program an error message comes up saying: 'XSitePro2.exe - Application Error The application failed to initialize properly (0xc00000135).
Click on OK to terminate the application.' I never had this problem installing and running XSP2 before on my Vista computer. Do you know why I can't open Xsitepro2 in my virtual machine here? I'm signed into XP as the Administrator (which is the only account I have on the Windows side anyway).
Could it be a permissions or memory issue? If so, got any ideas how to proceed? Hi All, Im having a small problem. I have installed the Windows 7 RC (ultimate) into a bootcamp partition on my MBP. During the install I had to reformat the partition to NTFS which I think is normal. I want to now use that partition in fusion to get the best of both worlds. However vmware does not display the partition in setup menu and i cant mount the drive in osx because its NTFS.
The simple fix I assume would be to install something like NTFS-3G, but I wanted to check if fusion does not already include an NTFS driver in its binary, this would make sense since all future versions of windows will be NTFS only. If this is not the case then would NTFS-3G be the way to go?
May seem like a obvious question to some but I just need clarity and to make sure I haven't corrupted the NTFS partition in some way. Cheers, James. Click to expand.I worked out why this did not work. The boot camp assistant makes a small 128MB partition along side the boot camp partition.
In the windows installer this appears as unallocated space so I had deleted it and merged it with the boot camp when formatting to NTFS. DO NOT DO THIS! It now appears this small partition contains some data that allows OSX to mount it correctly and Fusion to boot it. Removeing the boot camp partition in the assistant and the re-partitioning fixed this for me as it put the small partition back, and then all I had to do was reinstall Win 7 and fusion and osx were able to use it. Hope this helps out someone else, I havent seen anything about this from my google searches. Win 7 RC working well in Fusion. Just to add, another option for the occasional file that you want to share between the Mac OS and Windows running on an NTFS BootCamp partition is the use of a Thumb Drive which can be read by both OS'es.
So while in the Mac OS save files to the Thumb Drive that you need. Then when you boot into Windows via the BootCamp partition, you can read the files from the Thumb Drive. The opposite direction works as well. Of course you are limited by the size of your Thumb Drive and FAT32 limitations. Having said that, personally, I much prefer using VMware Fusion.
This allows me to run a variety of Linux/Windows installs just by selecting which VM image that I want to run. With Folder Sharing, it's really easy to share files both ways.
I really appreciate everyones input here. It has been a huge help.
Thank you again! I will see how my programs work using the virtual machine only before trying Bootcamp. So for now, I installed a virtual machine on my Macbook Pro using VM Ware Fusion and Windows XP Professional. I have a couple more questions about this please.
1) TWO XP PRO's: You can see by the screen capture I attached that it looks like its showing TWO instances of Windows XP Professional in the Virtual Machine Library. Is that supposed to be there or did I somehow accidentally install XP twice? And if dumbass me installed Win XP twice, can I delete it by opening it from the Virtual Machine Library and then drag the one I don't need into the trash can? 2) RAM: I have 6gb of ram on this Macbook Pro 17. One of my Windows programs requires a minimum of 1gb of ram.
So considering how much ram is used by the Mac side, plus Win XP, and plus the ram used for the program (1gb+), how much ram do you think I should allocate to the virtual machine? Thanks again!
Not too many years ago if you wanted to, test to see if a repair CD you downloaded worked or whether your custom made Windows install disc could boot, you had to burn the content to CD or DVD and then reboot your computer to try it out. This not only took vast amounts of time waiting for the disc to burn but it also meant perhaps fiddling with the boot order in the BIOS and if you didn’t have any rewritable media, every burn would cost you money. These days disc images (ISOs) are everywhere and that allows you to do several things such as like before, or even to test without leaving your desktop.
The trouble is using the above methods to boot the ISO image can still take time which isn’t ideal if for example you quickly want to try a number of the latest Linux distros. Being able to boot and test an ISO image with just a couple of clicks of your mouse can be a real time saver, here we show you 3 ways to do it. MobaLiveCD MobaLiveCD is a freeware tool that will run your Live or bootable disc images directly from within Windows with just a couple of clicks of your mouse. This is thanks to the small and open source virtual machine emulator QEMU. The program itself is portable and only 1.5MB in size which is quite impressive.
Not only will it start bootable CD ISO images but with the last update to version 2.1 you can also launch a bootable USB flash drive which is useful when you’re testing if your multi boot or installation USB works before trying it for real. MobaLiveCD is simplicity to use, all you have to do is run it (Run as administrator if you have UAC on) and either press “Run the LiveCD” and browse for the ISO image file, or click “Run the LiveUSB” and choose the letter of your flash drive. The program will then launch QEMU with a predefined configuration and begin the boot process. To interact with the emulated operating system, click in the window, press Ctrl + Alt to get out again. The “Right-click menu” button usually doesn’t work in Windows 7 or 8 because they recognise the ISO file type by default and already have other programs associated with it, Vista and XP will work if their ISO file type hasn’t already been taken over by another program. Although MobaLiveCD is small and easy to use it does have drawbacks. Firstly the QEMU program it relies on emulates very low end hardware.
It does use up to 1GB of memory but the CPU being emulated is a Pentium II 333Mhz which makes things sluggish during boot and inside the live operating system. As a simple example we booted in MobaLiveCD and VirtualBox, MobaLiveCD took 2 minutes 10 seconds to boot to the desktop, VirtualBox took only 33 seconds.
Also, because there has been no updates since 2009 it will sometimes fail to boot an ISO image or USB flash drive correctly, likely due to a now rather outdated version of QEMU. MobaLiveCD is still compact and useful but its mileage depends entirely on whether you can get it to work, an update would definitely be welcome but sadly the project appears to have been pretty much abandoned. Boot an ISO Image Directly From VirtualBox VirtualBox is a hugely popular free software to create and run virtual operating systems and it can run a virtual CD/DVD disc inside a virtual machine (VM) by using the computer’s real optical drive or an ISO image. This is ideal for booting and testing an ISO but there are a several steps to go through each time you want to boot a different image. Here we show you how to setup a virtual machine and be able to run ISO files with a few clicks.
If you don’t already have it,. Note we have tried this method with and it doesn’t work. Run the program and click New to create a new machine, name it ISOBoot. You MUST use ISOBoot (including capitals) or you will have to manually edit things later on.
For Type/Version use anything you like. Allocate enough memory to allow the ISO images to boot, 512MB-1GB should be plenty. Choose “Do not add a virtual hard drive” and click Create. Now with the new VM selected click Storage on the right, click the Empty drive in the Storage Tree and change from IDE Secondary Master to IDE Primary Master in the CD/DVD Drive dropdown menu. Click OK and close VirtualBox. The trick is to make VirtualBox load and boot an ISO image from the desktop without you having to launch the program first, go into Storage settings and manually browse for the file every time. Download the following file: The batch file injects the selected ISO filename into the ISOBoot virtual machine and then automatically runs it which boots to the ISO image.
You can either drop an ISO file onto the BAT icon or launch it as a command. To make things easier, copy the BAT file to: C: Programs Files Oracle VirtualBox Then download the zip file below, open it and double click the Install file to import the data into your registry: This creates a context menu entry so when you right click on an ISO file in Explorer a menu entry will allow you to click and run the ISO file inside VirtualBox automatically. Run RemoveISObootVirtualBox.reg from the Zip to remove the context menu entry. When you have finished simply power off the VM. These files rely on VirtualBox being installed to the default locations, you will need to manually edit them if this isn’t the case. If you don’t see the right click entry it could be that another program has taken over the ISO file type in which case you will need to edit the registry file yourself. Have a look at the (Default) Data value in HKEYCLASSESROOT.iso to see what has taken over from the default of “Windows.IsoFile” and adjust the registry file accordingly.
Boot an ISO Image Directly From VMware Player VMware Player is also a popular free virtualization software although we prefer VirtualBox because of the valuable snapshot facility. It can also be configured to automatically boot to an ISO image in a similar way, here’s how.
If you haven’t already, (near the bottom of the download page). Launch VMPlayer and click “Create a New Virtual Machine”.
Select “I will install the operating system later” and then Next. For the Guest operating system select Other/Other (Important!) and click Next again. Name the virtual machine ISOBoot and click Next. At the Disk Capacity screen you can leave the default of 8GB, this won’t be used as you are not using the virtual hard drive. Click Next - Finish and close VMPlayer, things like usable memory can be edited later on. This method is pretty much the same as VirtualBox, download the batch file below and either drop the ISO file onto it or use it as a command with an argument of the ISO filename.
To add the context menu, copy the BAT file to: C: Program Files (x86) VMware VMware Player or for 32-bit systems use C: Program Files VMware VMware Player Download the Zip below, open it and run the Install registry file to import the data into your registry, use the included x86 or x64 file depending on your host system. If everything works you will have a right click entry to directly launch a clicked on ISO file using VMware Player.
Like the VirtualBox setup above, the context entry won’t work if other software has previously taken over the ISO file type and you will need to check the registry to see which file type needs changing and then edit the registry file. Final Note: Although they are much larger than MobaLiveCD and need installing, apart from the obvious of being able to run your own virtual operating systems, both VirtualBox and VMPlayer have the advantage that the virtual machine you are using for ISO booting can be configured to run at a similar speed to the host computer. You can also enable or disable options such as networking and sound, and also allocate graphics memory, system memory and the number of CPU cores etc. MobaLiveCD on the other hand can be quite unreliable and incredibly slow to boot images because it emulates low end hardware and hasn’t been updated for years, meaning VirtualBox or VMware Player could be big time savers if you find yourself testing Linux distros or bootable ISO images often.
1 more way to run bootable ISO image files directly in Windows: QEMU, directly. Using ‘helpers’ (MobaLiveCD etc.) to run QEMU is for kids. MobaLiveCD right-click is a ‘wrong-click’, it fails many times More: I never had any speed problems with QEMU. Also: there’s newer versions of it than you mention! Latest releases: 2.9.0 Apr 20 2017, 2.8.1.1 Apr 20 2017, 2.7.1 Dec 23 2016, 2.6.2 Sep 29 2016. So, it seems the project is very much alive!
Read about in their new website: qemu.org/index.html Great article otherwise. Topic 2 and 3 are ok.