new to fusion and need advice on instillation

[chuck1234]

Here is my situation and questions follow

Situation:

Have at least 2 applications’ which cannot be run under leopard thus need to keep XP

I think I want to run windows XP home edition in a virtual machine under fusion (not as a bootcamp virtual machine under fusion ==unless you folks tell me bootcamp is the way to go )

Currently have a IMAC 2.4 gig processor,

3 gig memory

285 gig hard drive partitioned - 250 gig for Leopard, 35 gig for bootcamp (home XP)

Have windows XP installed in the boot camp partition along with 5-8 applications

Have Leopard installed in the 250 gig partition along with a number of mac applications

Questions

1) where do I install fusion in the XP boot camp partition (35 gig) or the mac (250 gig) partition

2) is there any advantage to

A -- reinstalling XP in a virtual machine (and reinstalling software applications) over

B -- converting the boot camp XP physical machine to a XP virtual machine?

3) Will I have the activation issues with XP windows and Office 2003 with either A or B above

4) what is done with the bootcamp partition after XP is installed/converted to a virtual machine. Can it be easily reclaimed by fusion or Leopard?

5) Can any XP applications be run in a fusion virtual machine without the use of XP.

I am sure I have missed a number of questions but this is a starting point.

thank you for your perspective

[Technogeezer]

Hopefully I can get you started here.

1) Fusion is a MacOS X application, so it gets installed on your MacOS disk.

2) You don't need to re-install here. You can either use the BootCamp XP installation within Fusion, or you can use the VMware Converter to convert it to a "pure" VM. Having a pure VM has the advantage of not requiring an administrator account to run the VM (among other things). The down side of conversion is that you're losing the ability to cross-boot the same XP installation into BootCamp to take advantage of hardware devices not directly supported by Fusion.

3) If you're only using a Fusion and not cross-booting back and forth between VM and BootCamp, I don't think you'll have the issues. Cross-booting (and even worse, using Fusion, Parallels Workstation and Boot Camp together) makes the activation issues more likely to happen.

4) The space carved out by BootCamp on your disk can be reclaimed for use by Leopard (it gets added back into your MacOS X disk).

5) No. XP applications are installed on and require an XP operating system, which in turn requires Fusion to run the XP operating system.

[chuck1234]

excellent answer and much appreciated. gives me direction and I can get started.

relative to the conversion of the Bootcamp partition to pure VM (question 2) where does one find the convertor. I have not found it on the pull down menu for Fusion. Is it the same convertor that is used for parallels (I found that one on the fusion web site) . Any direction and guidance is appreciated

[WoodyZ]

where does one find the convertor.

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

[chuck1234]

You folks have bee really helpful. It is much appreciated.

I have one further question which I have been unable to answer and which I think I need to resolve before converting my Bootcamp partition to a native VP (XP) partition using the vmware converter. (thank you Woodyz)

It appears fusion protects file integrity by removing the physical boot camp partition from view when the Bootcamp partition is running under VM. So chances of getting files out of sync appear to be minimal.

Question is :::

What are the advantages of a native XP partition over a boot camp partition. Is there a write up on this topic i have missed. Any information is much appreciated.

found the answer in what is an excellent article/paper by etung entitled "choosing the right virtual machine settings " http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-2523 - thank you all again for all your assistance. I must say installing and using Fusion has been a surprisingly pleasant experience. It just works.