The saga of my Parallels install

Discussion in 'Installation and Configuration of Parallels Desktop' started by Carolyn AnnG, Dec 8, 2009.

  1. Carolyn AnnG

    Carolyn AnnG Bit poster

    Messages:
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    I just thought I'd share the saga of my Parallels/Windows XP install...

    I run OS X 10.6.2, on a Core Duo CPU, with a gig of RAM and a 75GB that's partitioned for one reason or another. The machine belongs to my wife. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, my MacBook gave a little "pfft!" and keeled over, little rubber feet sticking up into the air, with not even a Sad Mac on the screen. So I have to be careful - she would not be happy if her Mac stopped working, too.

    For a variety of reasons, I need to use TurboCAD 12, some old home design apps and I'd also like to use AutoCAD 97LT - all of which run on Windows XP. I have my original XP upgrade disk, the old Windows 98 (full version) and a Windows Me upgrade, too. I decided to use the XP upgrade and the full version of 98. Along with Parallels 5.

    I chose that because I've used Parallels before; I used Parallels 2 a few years ago, but as I haven't had any reason to use a Windows program since then, I haven't had a reason to use any other version of Parallels. I did try VMWare Fusion, once. But since my last experience with their parent company (EMC) was "not exactly amicable", I absolutely refuse to give them any more of my money. So, Parallels 5 it is.

    Heading over to my nearest Mac store, I grabbed a copy of Parallels. Well, I would have, but none were out on the shelves. A chap came over, and after asking what I wanted, headed to the back room. He returned a little over a week later... (Okay, 20 minutes.) With a copy of Parallels 5! I grabbed it, paid for it, and skipped out the door.

    Getting home, I opened the box - it's got a solid "rattle" to it. There's a printed manual in it! Things are looking up. I haven't seen a printed manual in a box for ages! I read it. Cover to cover. Literally. (The plot needs some work...)

    The manual states that Parallels installs its virtual machines in /Users/user_name/Documents/Parallels. Oh... That's not good.

    For one reason or another, I have a smallish partition set aside for Snow Leopard. Also, I don't perceive the guest OS's to be documents - they're operating systems! The /Users/user_name bit is okay, but after that - forget it. To compensate for the small home partition, I have a 320GB Firewire drive attached to the Mac. I decided to create two folders on it: "Disk Images" and "Parallels". The latter would be aliased to /Users/Carolyn/Virtual Machines. That took about 3 seconds to setup. (Note: it's not a Unix-level link; it's a Mac alias.)

    I should note that my Carolyn folder is where I put my wiki development database (it's under Carolyn/Data/mysql) and my subversion repository (Carolyn/Repository). So it seemed reasonable to put the Virtual Machine folder there, too. If I had a larger disk drive, the folder wouldn't be an alias.

    I installed Parallels from the 'net; it seemed the best thing to do. I then created a disk image for Windows XP upgrade and Windows 98. The book was useless for this. After a couple of missteps, I finally had my images, and I connected to it, and started the install from Parallels "New Windows Installation". I pointed it at the Carolyn/Virtual Machines/ "folder", and Parallels did its thing. XP asked for the Windows 98 disk. I wondered how I could connect the Windows 98 upgrade when it asked. It took me a moment, but I figured if I do a disconnect/connect, all should be well. The virtual machine froze. Hmm... I deleted all the files. I tried again, this time with the real CD's. I guessed that if I suspend the virtual machine, I should be able to swap the disks. That worked. I did it again to put the upgrade disk in. Meanwhile the book mentions nothing of this. Windows installs lots of files, and tells me it's starting on its reboot career. It froze. Hard. I let it sit for a couple of hours, in case it was just really slow. Nope, it was hosed.

    Over the next couple of days, I tried various combinations. They all froze at the first reboot of the Windows install. It got really irritating. I clicked on "Report a problem" a few times, submitting "reports" (vents, really). Apart from an automated response (what, you really expect me to write down that reference number?), I think they vanished into the same place lost emails and socks eaten by the dryer can be found. I was reminded of Adobe's and Apple's "report a problem" systems - they don't bother responding to anguished cries, either.

    Now, I didn't want frozen VM's littering my hard drive; I also didn't want them residing in the Trash. The files, however, are in locked purgatory until you reboot. There is literally no other way of getting them out of the Trash; you have to reboot, that frees the file locks (due to the way Snow Leopard shuts down), and once restarted, you can empty the trash. This got so annoying I almost did a quick and dirty Automator action.

    By this time I was giving serious thought to Parallels 90-day money-back guarantee. And then I remembered something from older Mac programs and some Windows apps: no spaces in folder names.

    I know I should be more fastidious, and test each permutation, but, frankly, I want a working system. Parallels is not paying me to develop an install method. Parallels is not paying me at all; I paid them $80 for the software. So I did a few things in one go. I trashed Parallels; I figured it might help to use the copy on the CD. I accepted Parallels odious, to me, placement in my Documents folder and I went directly to the drive images. (I forgot about the space in "Drive Images"; fortunately, it didn't seem to matter. Oh - Parallels also said it was putting the Windows "Start" icon in my Dock; I've yet to see it.) Back to the install. It took the system about 4 unexpected virtual reboots, but I finally had Windows XP running!

    I was so elated I had a glass of wine to celebrate.

    I'm now building up the courage to move the VM to where I want it, and see if it still works. I'll let you know...

    Carolyn Ann
     
  2. tacit_one

    tacit_one Pro

    Messages:
    434
    Carolyn Ann,

    I'm truly sorry that your initial experience with our product was so... difficult. :( Virtualization technology could sometimes be difficult and we spend a lot of time making it as easy to use as possible. In your case we obviously didn't do our job properly, please help us to understand how could we improve.

    Your report is rather detailed, but it's not easy to extract the true list of issues out of it. Where did you have major difficulties? How do you think they could be mitigated from our side? What suggestions can you make?

    Thank you,
    Max
     
  3. Carolyn AnnG

    Carolyn AnnG Bit poster

    Messages:
    4
    My apologies!

    Here's my list, in a sort-of hierarchy. (Most important first.)

    I can't install the Virtual Machine where I think it should go
    I prefer not to litter my "Documents" folder with anything but documents. Using the precedent set by Apple, I put things like my Subversion repository into the /Carolyn folder. Apple's precedent: Carolyn/Pictures -> iPhoto library; Carolyn/Music -> iTunes, Carolyn/Sites -> the default (Apple-installed) Apache server document root and so on. Unfortunately this means some of these folders are aliases. I could do Unix-level links, but never seem to think of that when I should.

    I try to stay away from product or company specific names for these folders. So my mysql database resides at Carolyn/Data/mysql. My development wiki is Carolyn/Data/mysql/wiki. Ergo, Carolyn/Virtual Machines for, ahem, virtual machines. Admittedly no other folder in that area has a space in it.

    I'd like to make "Carolyn/Virtual Machines" the default folder for all my VM's. From the get-go! I haven't tested this, but I think it's the fact that the "Virtual Machines" is an alias that caused the freezing issue.

    Anyway, I really don't like having the VM's default to Carolyn/Documents/Parallels. I would tolerate /Carolyn/Parallels, but I prefer something a little less app-specific.

    Free up the files when the VM is closed
    I've probably named this one incorrectly. It's the whole "reboot so I can empty the trash" thing. Once the VM had frozen, I would quit, sometimes force-quit, Parallels, and dump the .pvm file into the trash. I couldn't empty the trash until I'd rebooted.

    Create a disk image
    This should be in the book. It's standard for all Mac's, and there's really no excuse for sending me off to look up how to do something I've never done before.

    Change CD's in the Virtual Machine
    Another one that I shouldn't have to figure out. I don't know how many people use their XP (or whatever) upgrades for clean installs, but trying to figure this one out took me a few moments. could I do that? Would it affect the install, or VM in some unknown way?

    Either some instructions on how to change the disk image in Parallels, or a little button saying "change the disk image" would be nice. Once I'd figured it out, I was fine. It actually didn't take me all that long to figure out; what made me really nervous was not knowing what affect it might have on the entire system!

    If it was my machine, I'd just trust Time Machine and that would be that. But it's my wife's, and I really didn't want to explain to her why her machine had suddenly, and mysteriously, stopped working. (Yes, TM is hooked up, and used. But that's not exactly helpful when she wants to check her email, and it doesn't work because the unexpected happened.)

    Fortunately, I'll never have to do this again. I'll be using snapshots to help with this.

    By the way, where are the Acronis and Kaspersky components? I don't see them on the disk, and they don't seem to have been installed in Windows.

    I hope this helps.

    Thanks! :)
    Carolyn Ann
     
  4. tacit_one

    tacit_one Pro

    Messages:
    434
    This part seems to be easy. Parallels Desktop already has a way to specify "Default" location for all your virtual machines. Just go Parallels Desktop Menu -> Preferences -> General and change your "Default folder for virtual machines". Is it something you're expecting here?

    This is because even Parallels Desktop application crashed, virtual machine (Windows) continued running in the background. If you'd restart Parallels Desktop, you get all your data/applications back. The main problem here is the crash that happened. Can you please do "Help -> Report a problem" and let me know the Problem Report ID? This should gather all application crashes that happened for you, so we can analyze them.

    Agree. Our documentation misses this. We will improve it.

    I think that this is definitely a problem of our documentation here, we will review and see how we can fix that.

    Acronis is on DVD (in the Box version) - just attach it to Windows (inside the virtual machine), or online for downloadable version
    Kaspersky is Parallels Internet Security, it's Virtual Machine menu -> Install Parallels Internet Security.

    It definitely does. We truly appreciate feedback on our product.

    Thank you,
    Max
     
  5. Carolyn AnnG

    Carolyn AnnG Bit poster

    Messages:
    4
    Hi, Max! Thanks for responding so quickly. :)

    The problem ID is 1268270.

    I did know about the "default folder", but it didn't occur to me that this would, or could, affect anything! Interestingly, it reports the actual path, not the alias. I'm not too sure I like that - it means the system is reading the alias, and bypassing it. If I move where the alias points to, I suspect that would break the "default folder" thing.

    Perhaps not a big problem, but definitely something to know! With big disks coming down in price, it's possible someone might move their Parallels folders - and then wonder why it didn't work. Esoteric, I know. (iPhoto has the same problem, by the way. Which I discovered when I moved my 80GB iPhoto database to a larger disk... Actually, I just read a review of the new Mac Mini in MacWorld, and they suggest attaching a bigger, faster, disk to those boxes; they said the internal disks are slow (and on the $599 model, it's not even a very large disk) and difficult to change.)

    So it's basically user error on the default folder thing?

    Thinking about your restart Parallels suggestion, I did try that. It didn't do much - the VM told me it was starting XP, but just sat there, with that nice black screen and those really nice graphics. Once I saw that a time or two, I stopped doing it. It was definitely hung. It seemed to me that Parallels didn't close properly; I did do a "ps" at one point, but I didn't note the results. I did note that Parallels was running, even though I'd closed it. I did do a kill -9, (sorry - I can't remember the exact process name; I was more intent on the PID's) but for some reason I didn't try and empty the trash afterwards! Sorry.

    Oh - I did try moving the windows.pvm. It gave me a "hal.dll" error on startup. I think I need to go read the manual, again!

    Thanks again (and thanks for the other information!)
    Carolyn Ann
     
  6. tacit_one

    tacit_one Pro

    Messages:
    434
    Thanks for the report ID, i will try to understand what causes the crash.
    As a side note, i would highly recommend you upgrading your Mac Mini to at least 2GB of RAM. Your current 1GB will not allow Mac OS X itself run properly in many cases - when you run Windows and Mac side by side, this may cause significant performance problems.

    Not sure if it's a bug, need to spend some time reviewing your situation on our side.

    In general, moving of the *.pvm is absolutely safe, it doesn't matter for where virtual machine files are located, as long as you have proper permissions to access them. Are you sure it's movement of the *.pvm caused the problem ( Or there were some additional actions on the way)?

    Regards,
    Max
     
  7. Carolyn AnnG

    Carolyn AnnG Bit poster

    Messages:
    4
    All I did, Max, was drag-and-drop the file! (I pressed "Cmd" to move it, instead of just copying it.)

    I moved it back, and it seems that the VM is corrupt. I'm not sure why - I haven't done anything with the VM!

    Well, it's a chance to try something I didn't before: I'll do a symlink between Carolyn/Virtual Machine and /Volumes/My Passport/Parallels. I'll let you know how it turns out; although it might be a couple of days before I can try this - I have a deadline looming!

    I've been hesitant to increase the RAM on this machine - it's not mine, as I say. But I think I might have to, anyway.

    Thanks again!
    Carolyn Ann
     

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