to parallels or not to parallels

Hi, good to see a active forum!,been reading through some posts to get a feel for how well Parallels works? which leads me to my question.

I have a 24’ Imac 2.4GHz, 2gig ram late 2007 model (Anyone with similar specs).When I purchased I also received Parallels 3.0 build? (Must DL latest build), anyway never bothered installing because the windows software I needed to run in boot-camp (Did not read the manual about Parallels in boot-camp-duh) for maxim power and not in a virtual world i.e. for rendering 3d models.

Now some months later after reinstalling everything I find myself thinking about running Parallels via boot-camp but am concerned about all the issues Im reading about i.e. activation of various softwares ect, could you shed some light on how stable it is to run in boot-camp and what are the best practices to aid stability?.

p.s. Im really tired of always booting between the two, would love to live the Mac experience and only go to the dark side for Autodesk Revit / 3ds Max Design / Outlook 07/ Onenote07.

Cheers oops kinda long!

gixxer

 

Ok it;s posts like this that scare me.

"from viaheli
These are some remarkably well articulated posts from folks either attempting to recover from a Parallels installation or merely attempting to help out those unfortunate ones in need of assistance. I apologize for continuing the rant however, this is absurd. Not in a long time have I seen such mad scrambling to put out the fires of bungled software applications. For myself, I'm currently in the middle of a two week business trip thousands of miles from home with none of my platform disks available to reload anything in a recovery attempt. In short, I'm screwed. All this because I placed at least some faith in the software developer's ability to meet the basic needs of the user. A basic installation allowing some cross-platform utility with much more of the capabilities being availed to the user should he or she wish to delve further into it. Heck...I couldn't even get past the first startup of Parallels without being forced to reactivate Windows for God's sake. Moreover, I was left powerless in my ability to do so because Parallels application evidently timed out waiting for me to choose whether or not to do so. This is no way to 'run a railroad', my friends. The person that authorized this software release should be made to sit the help desk for the foreseeable future so that he/she gets a clear understanding of the impact to others of such an unwise decision. I cannot fathom what they were thinking. Good luck to everyone on this one."

hmm?

 

People seem rather scared of re-activating Windows, re-activating Windows is a not an issue, it's a hassle at best, but the need to re-activate doesn't jeopardized in any way your Windows installation or your files.

In relation to the cited post I don't share this person's experience in any way or form, but I can give you some advices that would prevent such situations. Because Parallels depends on how OS X works internally and how Windows works internally there are things that you just have to be careful and are beyond Parallels control.

Advices:

1.
Don't re-activate Windows immediately when it asks you to, you have three days, so there's no rush, SPECIALLY if you updated Parallels and haven't finish updating Parallels Tools (Parallels drivers for the Guest OS), only once you finish all the updating, should you re-activate.

2.
Read the manual first and proceed accordingly.

3.
Updates handling.

a. Apply/Install Mac OS X software updates first (if any).
b. Apply/Install Parallels latest versions secondly (if any).
c. Apply/Install updates to the Guest OS (Windows) Boot Camp drivers (Apple Software updates) thirdly.
d. Apply/Install Microsoft/Windows Updates to Windows (guest) fourthly.
e. Always reinstall Parallels Tools in the Guest OS when you install a new version/build
of Parallels (this is when the re-activation usually kicks in).

4.
NEVER upgrade software 'on the road' when you don't have access to original installation media and/or backups, most of the times it will work well but one out of a hundred or a thousand it won't (with any piece of software, firmware, hardware or anythingware) and you're screwed, don't do it specially if what you're running at the moment is running fine and there are no immediate dangers if you don't update.

 

I just want to add my piece of cake to Specimen's great post.
1.Always install any Windows updates if you have VM based on Boot Camp, only when logged in Windows through Boot Camp.
2. If you did somehow shutdown Windows incorrect in Boot Camp always login again to Boot Camp first and let Windows to perform file system check, make sure you shutdown Windows correct.
3. Backup, and again backup - Microsoft suggests to perform backup regularly and before applying any Service Pack
and you have several options
-NTbackup - with System state - for me it is not optimal way
-Partition backup using http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone/
-G4L the best choice for me it is byte by byte copy of hard disk
http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l - this is what I am using on test MB

All of above are free

 

Ok thanks for the replies.

Spiciman - Ok thanks you made some valid points, I will install as you suggested and give it a go. Interesting about the guest login, I normally always work from the admin acc, probably a bad idea, will go the route of guest.

John - Thanks for the response and will take your advice, just one more question for you, what is the best practice to upgrade Parallels, fresh download or can Parallels update itself?.

So my plan is as follows:

1-follow all advice
2-make sure Mac side completly updated.
3-same for xp sp3 / all software updates i.e. Office 07/Autodesk ect from within bootcamp and in guest acc.
4-bake up.
4-deploy Parallels from Mac side - update Parallels.
5-enjoy?

Thanks again

 

Guest login? I said guest OS (Operating System), in virtualization software there's the host and there are the guests, the host is the OS that hosts the virtualization software and the guests are the OSs that are in the virtual machines.

You don't need to update Parallels, just start off with the latest build (5608), if you purchased Parallels and got an older than 5608 version, don't install it, install the latest instead and insert your license key in that version.

 

cheers my bad