Uninstalling Parallels on Windows side

Hello and thank you for any anticipated help.

I am sampling both VMWare and Parallels on my MBP (Late 2008). I am running Boot Camp as a separate partition, so I can, if needed boot directly to Windows 7 (Pro). My machine has 8GB RAM. OSX 8.2.1

In an effort to fully understand both systems, I am attempting to install, separately each program. I tested Parallels and to avoid any problems I went ahead and uninstalled it so I can now try VMWare.

Here is the problem. On the Windows side there is still a folder named Parallels Shared Applications that has all my Windows programs listed with the word (Mac) following each program name.

I didn't see any way to uninstall this folder and upon further digging (into the registry), it seems as though Parallels has wormed its way throughout the registry with exe files. The sampling is C:\Users\Xname\AppData|Roaming\Parallels\Shared Applications\xxxfilenamexxx (Mac).exe %1.

How to clear all of these registry entries and also how do I clear the Parallels Shared Applications folder from my programs folder?

Thanks

 

Did you uninstall Parallels tools from the Windows side or just uninstall the Parallels Mac application?

Steve

 

It was a while ago. I clearly remember deleting it from the Mac side for sure. On the Windows side I cannot recall. I looked in the program files and it isn't there however. I looked in the registry and only see the links as listed in the folder (which I did delete).

I am more concerned about all the garbage embedded into the registry by Parallels. Deleting the exe and other files can be done simply by running regedit and clearing out all reference lines and folders associated with Parallels.

 

Just go to the Control Panel, Add Remove Programs, and uninstall Parallels Tools, unless you already started manually cleaning up or used another program to uninstall it, and in that case Parallels Tools uninstall might fail or the entry was deleted from Add Remove Programs.

The clean way to remove Parallels Tools is to use the uninstaller, I would suggest you install Parallels Tools again and then uninstall it with it's own uninstaller, only after that you should look for leftovers (unfortunately, any program installed on Windows will leave traces, normaly they are just dead-weight and have no influence except taking up space in the registry).

But something doesn't seem quite right with your story thou, first you say you are testing both Parallels and VMWare, and later when referring to the uninstall you say 'it was a while ago'.

 

Thanks for the information.

For the record. It was a few months ago that I did the testing. After working with Parallels I uninstalled it and installed VMware Fusion. On the Mac side everything appeared fine since uninstalling anything on a Mac is simpler. I deleted the program and removed any plists and other left over baggage. However, on the Windows side, typical to MS, the registry was full of files and strings relating to Parallels. I left it alone since it really didn't create a problem until recently I noticed the machine acting a bit lethargic. Also, being somewhat anal, I wanted to remove all vestiges of the old program including the leftover folders that had Mac shortcuts still lurking within Windows 7, hence the start of this thread.

Last night I deleted all files and folder relating to the Parallels program, rebooted and everything seemed normal. I then went into the registry and cleaned up all known associations with Parallels. Again rebooting with no problem so I assume what I did seemed to have worked but boy, was it a PITA.

FWIW, I am running WMWare Fusion and seem to have no adverse problems. Basically, I found both programs met my expectations, but it was almost a coin toss to select Fusion.

Thanks for your input.