Question

Boot Runner Impressions?

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
October 8, 2015
3 replies
21 views

+3

cforte
New Contributor

I'm looking for comments and experiences from anyone who has used Boot Runner to handle dual/multi-boot Macs. We're still clinging to some classrooms that need to dual-boot between OS X and Windows and Boot Runner seems to be a good option to keep these rooms working until we can get something better long-term.

If you are using it, or have used it in the past, what are your overall impressions? How reliable is it? How easy is it to deploy as an automated post-image step? Have you been able to manage its settings with Casper? I'm interested in any and all feedback on it.

T

+9

timlarsen
Valued Contributor
Forum|Forum|10 years ago
October 8, 2015

Hey @cforte I once had an entire department of 3D design users setup with Boot Runner and it worked pretty reliably. Not to mention it provided a fool proof user experience. Keep in mind the product works by first booting fully into OS X and then presenting the "Choose an operating system" screen (btw customization options are great), which can sometimes be a nuisance and not end up saving a lot of time - but not having to hold down that alt key is still worth that wait. The menu bar icon once logged in is a nice touch to quickly reboot into another partition, although at the time of my deployment I had a few difficulties FUT-ing that preference during imaging, i.e. enforcing the icon to appear which is a checkbox in the pref pane.

More important than Boot Runner was how I used to integrate Winclone Pro with Casper to automate the partitioning and copying of the Windows image onto the Boot Camp partition (not sure if Windows is on one of your other partitions). TwoCanoes has an awesome article that explains all the steps here: https://twocanoes.com/winclone/support/using-jamf-casper-suite-and-winclone-pro-to-image-a-lab-of-dual-boot-macs.

Coming full circle I ended up scrapping all of the above due to the unreliable nature of running Windows via Boot Camp itself - users' Windows partitions were frequently blue-screening due to OS corruption that could not be repaired and end up creating a support nightmare, and since we have now upgraded the department to high-end Mac Pro's we are sticking with running Windows virtually via Parallels.

But if you had to use Boot Camp Boot Runner is an awesome add-on and so is Winclone Pro!