Well, I finally had to retreat. I needed to work in Vista, and couldn’t do without having OS X open also, so the MacBook Pro has moved back a half step for now. I decided to create a Parallels VM for Vista, and just run it that way. I didn’t want to waste the disk space on my Boot Camp partition, so I removed it entirely.

In the same boat? It’s easy to do. Here’s what I did:

1. To remove (completely) the Vista Boot Camp partition, go to:
   Applications > Utilities > Boot Camp Assistant
2. Select the “Restore Mac to a single partition” option (Note: this will erradicate the Vista Boot Camp partition entirely. If you have data you need to backup, do it before this step!)
3. The Macintosh will reboot into its only OS now… OS X
4. Launch Parallels
5. If you created any Virtual Machines that didn’t work when trying to convince Parallels to honor the Vista Boot Camp partition, remove them by going to:
   File > Delete… (in the Parallels Desktop menu)
6. Create a new Vista Parallels VM by using the OS X Installation Assistant
   File > New…

That’s it. Hopefully Parallels will support the selection of a Boot Camp partition for Vista soon.

UPDATE: I am now running a newer version of Parallels with the setup I wanted all along (read the post about that Vista Parallels setup—be sure to read the ‘UPDATE’ at the bottom).

Tags: Apple, Applications, Boot Camp, Hardware, Intel, MacBook Pro, Macintosh, Microsoft, Operating Systems, os x, Parallels Desktop, PC

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