What's New/What's Fixed in Beta3 (comments)

Here's a list of fixes from the official mail, commented:

* No need to reinstall Parallels Workstation if it’s moved from the default file location.
(E.g. you may move it from Applications to anywhere and it will still work even after the reboot)

* Mac OS X no longer restarts when Parallels Workstation is left running and host wakes up from “Sleep†mode
(No comments. MBP owners, I'm sure you’ll like this fix )

* Kernel no longer panics when working with several VMs
(This fixes most of kernel panics. May be even all of them)

* Improved speed and performance
(5 seconds boot time is back )

* Idle guest OS now consumes only 1-2% of CPU power
(Recently it was reported that idle guest consumes up to 50% of CPU power sometimes. Now it’s fixed)

* Bridged networking issues fixed
(RDP/SSH connection from primary OS to guest doesn’t work? Wireless connection doesn’t work on MBP? Beta3 solves the problem)

* Sound support introduced
(We've initially introduced sound output support and working on improving it and introducing sound input. And yes, we know that it’s jerky sometimes – this is still beta )

* Improved mouse synchronization tool
(Just try, you’ll see it all by yourself. Remember, you must have Parallels Tools installed to be able to use it. To install - click VM->Install Parallels Tools... You don't need to reinstall them in case they're already installed)

* Keyboard mapping and repeating bugs fixed
(At least “|†key should work. As well, keyboard repeat function was fixed)

* CD/DVD problems fixed
(You can read DVDs now. Some other fixed related to CD/DVD device)

* Many other minor fixes

 

Still seeing high CPU at idle

You guys are great !!. Just upgraded beta 3 from beta 2. Speed is back, sound works !!

However I am still seeing 20+% CPU in Activity Monitor when idling.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled parallel tools and I have rebooted both the Mac and the VM.
Is there anything else that I need to do ?

 

On MacBookPro 2.16 Ghz

I can boot fine with the host networking (but there is no network connection, is that supposed to work?) and I can boot fine with the en1 Wireless Adapter selected, but when I select en0 it kernel panics (I posted the panic log already). Isn't anyone else having this problem? It is entirely consistent and happens every time.

I purchased yesterday.

How can I totally uninstall and re-install?

Thanks

 

Let me start off by saying I'm amazed how fast the Parallels team is fixing the bugs. You have a new customer right here!

Upgraded to Beta 3. Comments:

Still slower to boot xp than Beta 1. But it's an improvement over Beta 2.

Idle time is MUCH MUCH better. Still hovering around 10-20% sometimes though.

That's it for now.

Love the product!

Edit: running on MBP 2.0. haven't tried waking from sleep when parallels is running. i'm to scared, someone else try it,

 

It works! It really really does.

 

My MBP still (with beta3) resets on wake-up if I leave a Parallels VM running and put it to sleep.

 

My MBP does wake up properly.

But does anyone else use the ethernet port? Selecting the wireless adapter appears to work fine, but if I select en0, it kernel panics every time on starting windows.

I re-installed beta 2 and it starts fine with en0.

 

I was able to get sound working in Win2K by adding the Sound device in the VM settings before launching the VM. So that's good.

However, the boot time is still slow, and I've gotten the VM to hang twice in 10 minutes simply by using Windows Media Player to view a movie trailer, and also by hitting a web page that uses Flash. Hopefully these kinks will work themselves out over the next couple of betas.

- Eric

 

Still no pipe or backslash under SuSE

Nice improvements in Beta 3!

Still get <> instead of |\ on my macbook in a vm running SuSE 10

John

 

Boot time & idle usage

I'm still seeing a boot time of about 40 seconds for XP.

I'm also seeing about 10% CPU usage by Parallels when XP is idle.

 

Keyboard Mapping

I still get the same thing as above on my Mac Mini (Intel Core Duo) whether I'm running SuSE Linux 10 or Windows Server 2003.

 

Sound Input Work With Voice Recognition?

Is the sound input clean enough to work with high level audio applications like Dragon Naturally Speaking?

 

For me the vm idles with windows server 2003 at about 8-9%, but I think that's quite acceptable.

About the keyboard layout, I'm using Parallels with on a mbpro with a german keyboard and when pressing < I get ^.
Would it be possible to create a special windows keymap for apple keyboards? So that keys are in windows are really there where they are on the macbook?
Like [ ] and {} on a german keyboard?

greets philipp

 

Switching the MacBook to one core and then back to two cores while running parallels resets my MacBook.
And if I try to start the virtual machine with only one core on it just does nothing until I switch the second core on. I think it blocks somewhere and waits for the second cpu to become available.

greets philipp

 

Sound lets the OS inside the VM hang.

I've installed Beta 3 and added sound>default Audio to the VM. The first time Windows started fine, no startup sound though (I'm using Win2K SP4). Going into System preferences I tried playing a system sound. It played about a millisecond, just enough to hear somthing and then Windows hung but the mouse stayed alive. The VM just sat there, hogging CPU Time. At about 140% CPU I reset windows, let it start up again and right when it plays the startup sound it made a little "peep" and hung again. And one more reset, same thing. I then removed sound from the VM and it started just fine without sound.

 

I've had the exact same experience with Win2K SP4 as well. As long as I remove sound from the VM it runs fine. But with sound enabled, Win2K hangs and requires a reset every time.

 

Great work on beta 3.

Sound works, networking works, cd drive ejects sometimes, I can read dvd's.
Things are getting better every day.

The thing that amazes me most is the WIN XP boots in approximately 7 seconds. That's 1.5 minutes faster than my Compaq x1000 1.6 GHz Centrino laptop boots. How do you do it?

Maybe Microslow could stand some consulting from your team.

Keep up the good work

Jack Mewshaw

 

System: Dual Core Mac Mini, 2Gig Ram.

Guest OS's, WinXP SP2 and Ubuntoo Linux 5.1

Sound works perfectly, smooth playback with winamp, windows media, pandora.com. Everything I've thrown at it has played perfect audio with no drop outs. Even multiple sound sources mix to the output without error.

Cpu utilization is next to nothing when XP is idle. %1-%2

XP boots in 35 seconds, shuts down in 7 seconds.

Right now, winamp is playing an internet audio stream in xp, I'm in Safari typing this, unison is downloading, and my cpu utilization is hovering around %10 on both cores.

Kevin L.

 

Oh Yeh!

I forgot to me mention that Slingplayer actually works and gets about 28 frames/sec. Lips are a little out of synch and the righ and left speakers drift in and out (mono-stereo-mono), but the Slingplayer actually runs with a very decent frame rate.

How cool is that!!!

 

Very cool..

http://www.distributed-home.com/tiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=24

Only problem I have is a kernel panic (reboots) if I try to use parallels network driver with the built in airport, default driver works ok.