Make WinXP screen appear on startup?

I have searched and searched the Windows forum with no luck. Can someone please help me here? I have two users on the host OS, want the same two users sharing VMs (running WinXP) to be installed - one installed is so far. Thus far, booting into WinXP takes me past the Windows "Welcome" screen right into my own Windows account; not so secure, and inconvenient for the other user.

After looking in Parallels/Preferences>General, I spotted "Default folder for virtual machines:" is in my own ~Documents/ folder. Is that the source of the problem? If so, what's the safest way to move the VM over to /Users/Shared? Simply selecting the option in Preferences? Heck, where IS the VM residing?I?

Many thanks

 

The VM files are usually in your (=current user)'s document folder, and there in the Parallels folder. (user)/documents/Parallels. You could set up several VM's, each with their own Windows OS, and put one VM file package into user A's documents directory, and the other one in user B's document directory.
But as far as I understand you're trying to set up 2 Windows users on one virtual machine; in that case, you need to set up the two users in Windows. A user will then need to authenticate against the system by providing a username and password.

 

Thanks, but I evidently didn't convey the problem.
First and foremost is that no matter which of two users is currently logged into the host, the WinXP VM goes straight into my (WinXP) user acct - it skips the Welcome Screen. I now have a hunch that it is because the VM is in my Documents/Parallels folder, not /Users/Shared/...

When I first set this up, I did indeed get the welcome screen, and went back and forth between Host users to test out the same VM, noting things I would have thought would stay the same didn't. Only a few switches, and now I am in this bind.

I do not want a separate WinXP VM for each host user, because that would mean having to install and maintain commonly-used apps across the VMs (virus protection, MS Office, etc.)

Many thanks - I hope you have some ideas.
Dave

Edit: I failed to mention that this is for latest build of Parallels, running on the latest version of OS X (Snow Leopard) released us regular folks (no betas).

Further, I just discovered that although when I start the VM I fly past the Welcome screen to my own (WinXP) account, if I let the Windows screen-saver kick in and then wake up WinXP, I'm put not only back into the Welcome screen (!), but upon getting into my (WinXP) account I have a different desktop!!!

 

Have you tried setting up different users on the virtual machine, i.e. in XP? I don't think this is to do with the location of the VM. I'm pretty certain you could move it to the root of your Mac's hard drive (if you do that, do it while the VM is turned off, and you'll then have to tell Parallels where the VM package is), and the VM will - that is my guess - display the same behaviour.

 

I have indeed tried that; in fact, I noticed that, contrary what the Parallel's manual states on page 49, first paragraph, changing the default location of the VM in preferences changes the location of existing VMs, at least as far as I can tell from the OS X gui.

To summarize:
I have a host with two users (both admin privileges), and want them to share a VM with WinXP Pro sp3;
the guest VM should have (in addition to Administrator), two user accounts. All accounts are password-protected.

What I am experiencing is that upon starting the VM, I don't see the "Welcome" screen, but rather am logged directly into the Administrator account (I mistakenly wrote earlier that it was my own user account). Further, if I don't do anything and let the screen saver start up, then upon rousing the computer I am at the "Welcome" screen!!!

Should I just start this all over in a new thread?!?
Frustrated as can be - DJB