One of the new Parallels 5 features is MacLook which makes the Windows apps look like OS X apps. After some digging into my Windows 7 VM, I discovered that a suite of Stardock apps is used to accomplish this. The side effect of this is that two Stardock apps run automatically inside my VM. I do not use MacLook so I fired up Control Panel to uninstall the Stardock apps. The uninstall did nothing, leaving behind all of the files and leaving behind the two Stardock processes. To work around this, I killed the two Stardock processes via Task Manager and then, I removed the two Stardock folders under c:\Program Files. So far, I have seen no adverse side effects inside my VM when I did this. I suspect that installing Parallels Tools results in the Stardock apps being installed. Going forward, can we make installing the Stardock apps optional inside a VM?
I posted re this the other day at http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=95526&highlight=stardock. My issue was that "the Windows Action Center now reports that I need to "Address a problem with WindowBlinds". It would be good to get a reply from Parallels re this as the v 5 upgrade installed additional software which results in, albeit a minor, error condition. I've experienced no ill effect from this s/w being installed, but I would have preferred to have known that third party s/w was being installed with this upgrade.
Eric Hamburg, yes this software comes with Parallels Guest Tools. It is required for MacLook feature to work.
Thanks for the information. Any advice on the error message I already reported re this? Attached is a screen shot from the Windows Action Center. Going to the Stardock site provide no actionable information.
