Windows(bootcamp) shared partition unmounted when VM launched

[Buckskin]

Here is my setup, then my problem.

I have a Macbook Pro laptop running MaxOSX. The disk drive

has 2 partitions, 1 for the MAC OSX, the other for Windows.

The Windows partition is FAT32, and is shared when running MacOSX (that is,

I can see both partitions under MacOSX).

I configured VMWARE to launch bootcamp as a virtual machine. This seemed to be the easiest

option, as Windows XP was already installed under it. (Thus, I did not need the Windows XP

CDROM, and no additional disk storage).

When I launch the VM under MacOSX to run XP, it unmounts the FAT32 partition in

MacOSX. Thus,

though I can run XP under the VM, I lose access to that partition on the MAC side, and can

not share all my common files.

I tried remounting it using the MAC disk utiliity, but can not as it is in use. I can only remount

it once I have exited VMWARE completely.

Does VMWARE require to unmount the shared FAT32 partition?

Is it possible to solve this if bootcamp was not on that partition? (can bootcamp

be on another partition?)

The goal is to keep the FAT32 partition mounted for the MAC when running VMware

with a bootcamp virtual machine.

thanks

Andrew

[Andreas_Masur]

The goal is to keep the FAT32 partition mounted for the MAC when running

VMware with a bootcamp virtual machine.

Andrew,

This is not possible since you are looking at a physical device. In order to maintain data integrity, it can only be accessed by one machine at the same time....either Mac OS or the virtual machine but not both.

Ciao, Andreas

[admin]

Does VMWARE require to unmount the shared FAT32

partition?

Yes, what you describe is the intended behavior.

Is it possible to solve this if bootcamp was not on

that partition? (can bootcamp

be on another partition?)

Can you be more specific about what you want to do? If you're running a bootcamp virtual machine off partition $FOO, you can't use it in OS X at the same time (however, setting up a network share or shared folder might do what you want).

PS - VMware, not VMWARE; Mac, not MAC. Since the IPO, we can afford 7-bit ASCII

[Buckskin]

The FAT32 partition, in addition to holding the Windows XP OS, also hold shared folders,

such as "My Documents". I used this documents folder as common for Mac as well as XP.

Previously, using Bootcamp, if I boot in XP, then I see only one partition, the FAT32 one

(that contains all my docs). When I boot in Mac OS X, then I see 2 partitions, one of which

is FAT32 and my docs. So I really only care to have the docs folder concurrently shared while

running XP via the VMware virtual machine under MacOSX.

Thanks

Andrew