newbie boot vamp VM questions pausing, bluetooth, tutorial, best practices?

Hi,

I am a windows guy moving to dual environment - so go easy one me. Seeing the windows on my new MBP is .... a bit unsettling. I have an i7 MBP with 16 GB ram running Sierra and the latest parallels. I have allocated 4 GB of ram and 2 cores. Here are my questions -

1) I want to run boot camp and Parallels VM together (obviously not at the same time) - switching from one to the other when my applications call for it. I also want to make updates, new files, program installs, i.e. any changes to be kept no matter what side I am working from. From this article - http://kb.parallels.com/en/112941 - it makes is sound like there are two ways to do this and I am afraid I have chose the wrong one based on the fact that I can pause it from the action menu - but don't think I should be able to? At the bottom of the article it says this :
Note: Windows running from Boot Camp has the following limitations:

• It can't be paused.
  
  
• It can't be saved as a snapshot.
  
  
• It can't run in Safe Mode.
  
  
• It can't be compressed.

Again - I can pause it in the way I have installed the VM - Do I have this installed incorrectly?

2) In the settings I have - share bluetooth devices in windows "unchecked" is that the right way to do this?

3) There is a lot of features and things going on in parallels - are there some good tutorials? The only decent thing on youtube I can find is for version 9. I am trying understand all the features, and how to best use this. The file transfer capability etc.. Anyone have a resource to help me out?

4) Best practices - This goes with 3 to an extent - any tips, tricks and best practices you can share would be much appreciated.
Sorry for my long post. Thanks in advance for any/all help.

 

Hi @Tom13 , you can try importing the boot camp partition by clicking here , so that you can have it as a separate virtual machine and make the changes here and also run the boot camp alone as per your convenience.

 

Thank you for you reply - perhaps you did not read my post carefully..... I want this - so that you can have it as a separate virtual machine and make the changes here and also run the boot camp alone as per your convenience"

BUT - I still have the pause features at detailed in #1 above. I did not think PAUSE worked when using this mode. SO it makes me think I am not using it.....

Any thoughts on #3 or #4?

 

Specifically - I still have Pause and Suspend under the actions tab - and they seem to work.
Please advise - Am I running this incorrectly? I did not think those features work "as per the documentation" when you are virtualization a bootcamp partition?
Thanks in advance.

 

Please check whether this blog is what you need.

Does the Snapshots feature work for you? If not, then you're running a direct bootcamp-based VM, which is totally fine. No need to have undue concerns about the Pause feature being usable.

 

Ah - I did not see that feature. Is that under the action menu? So I guess the documents not being able to pause, suspend, etc.. may be incorrect.

Thanks

 

When I try it - it gives me a warning - then saying if you are using a virtual machine you will loose unsaved data.....
So it looks like I can, it looks like you should not. I can for sure pause the virtualized machine.

 

Not necessarily. We are still unsure of the exact setup that you've created from the bootcamp installation.

We need a screenshot of this.

 

here you go

 

paused screen shot

 

Ok, you are trying to suspend the VM, which wasn't what I was referring to. I was talking about taking snapshots. Please click on Actions, take a screenshot of the menu that appears and reply with the same.

 

OK - My fault. It is simply not there in the actions menu.
But you can clearly see the pause function works - so that question still stands. The documentation appears to be incorrect about loosing the feature.

 

Please pause the VM, generate a Problem Report and reply with the same.