Running windows on Mac

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whit

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I need to run XP on an iMac, is there any problems with doing this.

Does it slow down the mac, do I need to put anti virus on, which is the best way to go either boot camp or parallels.
I do feel a bit nervous about putting windows on to a Mac!!

Any help would be great:thumbs:

Whit
 
I run windows on my Mac (as little as possible). I use parallels as it is quicker to load parallels then to reboot the machine to run bootcamp.

Windows runs fine. I don't have antivirus installed, but then again I do not use windows to access the internet and touch wood never had a problem.

There is also another package called fusions which is supposed to be better than parallels but I've never tried it. Parallels works fine for me.
 
I use Parallels with no problems at all and have been since I converted to my Macs from PC... :shrug:


I had the same concerns as you and would NOT have done it if it had not been for work reasons... :suspect:



But it is problem free and does not slow down the Macs at all and just operates as another window... ;)



I have never tried Bootcamp though... :D





:p
 
Another vote for Parallels. Well worth the money.

Oh, and you can install Internet Security (antivirus) from inside the software onto your Windows.
 
I did it using bootcamp, because I wanted it to run natively. After a year I'd realised the only times I'd booted into XP were to make sure that I'd applied service packs and updated the antivirus (essential if you will be connecting to the internet, or moving files between other PCs) was up to date. In the end I deleted it to free up space on the HD. Not missed having it.
 
Thanks for the replies, will try Parallels.
Just one more thing if I use time machine will that back up the windows bit as well?

Whit
 
When using XP, you should take whatever antivirus precautions you would normally use when using an MS OS. Personally, I use free AVG. I only use XP now for one application (it was two until last week).

You can have time machine backup the XP virtual drive but I prefer to exclude this and carry out separate backups from XP. I prefer t back up data only - not OS or applications.
 
Time machine will backup Windows if installed under Parallels or VMware Fusion, but will not backup a Bootcamp partition as this will not be Mac formatted. If your drive goes down Time Machine will restore your Parallels and Windows along with everything else, but if you try to look in your Time Machine Windows backup for individual files, you can't as it is just one huge file.

This can cause Time Machine problems, if you add one 5 MB jpeg to Windows, instead of just appending this to the backup, it will backup the complete Parallels Windows file which can get very big. Because of this Parallels offers the option to exclude itself from the Time Machine backup. If you take this option you'd need to backup regularly from within Windows.

Similar problems occur with Entourage, if you have a huge database file as some do, I regularly see 15 GB or more, you receive 1 new email and Time Machine makes another copy of the identities database.

Another backup option is to use Silverkeeper to simply backup your user folder. Then each time you backup and a file has been added to Parallels Windows, it simply replaces the large file rather than recreating multiple copies as with Time Machine. I prefer this and additionally make weekly clones with Carbon Copy Cloner. I haven't checked to see if Silverkeeper is Snow Leopard compatible yet.

I too would recommend AVG Free anti virus for Windows.
 
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