Windows 7 look option is greyed out puzzle?

R

RobertWise

Member
I have installed the trial version of PD9 this afternoon, I am currently running PD8 with a Windows 8 VM install. The upgrade went without issue. However, the "use Windows 7 look" option is greyed out for some reason. Can anyone shed any light on why this should be?
 
Looks like no one has any ideas on what the issue could be with this so may have to raise a ticket. TBH from what I could see after install there appears to be very little that PD9 brings to the party over PD8, so if PD8 will still work with Mavericks then I may give this version a miss.
 
Ok, please try these steps: 1. Uninstall Parallels Tools from Windows VM; 2. On Mac side, open up finder and go to Users/Your Username/Library/Parallels/Downloads; 3. Remove Stardock related files, like Start 8 and similar; 4. Restart Windows, install Parallels Tools; 5. Enable Windows 7 View. Please let us know how it goes!
 
juzci said:
Ok, please try these steps: 1. Uninstall Parallels Tools from Windows VM; 2. On Mac side, open up finder and go to Users/Your Username/Library/Parallels/Downloads; 3. Remove Stardock related files, like Start 8 and similar; 4. Restart Windows, install Parallels Tools; 5. Enable Windows 7 View. Please let us know how it goes!
Click to expand...

Thank you for your response Hanna. To be honest with you I did a quick evaluation of PD9 and decided that for me it brought little to the party over and above PD8. In fact I couldn't see any feature in PD9 that would want to make me upgrade from PD8. With that in mind I have gone back to my PD8 Windows 8 VM install and will stick with that until PD10 is released in 2014. As far as I'm aware even if I upgrade to Mavericks PD8 will still be supported.

Thanks once again though.
 
juzci said:
Ok, please try these steps: 1. Uninstall Parallels Tools from Windows VM; 2. On Mac side, open up finder and go to Users/Your Username/Library/Parallels/Downloads; 3. Remove Stardock related files, like Start 8 and similar; 4. Restart Windows, install Parallels Tools; 5. Enable Windows 7 View. Please let us know how it goes!
Click to expand...

I'm having the same problem as the original poster. I tried this and it did not resolve the problem.

The VM in question was converted from a VMWare Fusion VM. I had purchased Start8 and ModernMix from Stardock and already had copies installed in the VM. Once the VM was converted, those applications no longer worked, and I uninstalled them. but that didn't resolve problem with the greyed-out menu option.
 
Same here. I didn’t migrate from Fusion, I’m trying the trial with a 64bit Windows 8.1 Preview installed from scratch. Nothing helps. There are no relevant downloads in ~/Library/Parallels/Downloads/ (except for an old 8.0 dmg file wasting tons of space — you really should put these into cache directory, not ~/Library/Parallels!). Looks kind of unreliable to me…?
 
So I finally got a reply from Parallels: you wouldn’t know it from their marketing, but this feature is Windows 8-only. Not that it makes any sense.
 
It'll probably work in Windows 8.1 once Stardock updates Start8 to work in Windows 8.1. It's a third-party add-in.

I managed to get it to work in Win8 after reinstalling Start8. I had bought it from Stardock before I had Parallels, so I used Stardock's installer file. I don't know if the one from Parallels is different, but it must be at least somewhat different since the version that ships with Parallels is supposed to work only in a Parallels VM.
 
Update: Parallels’ own KB article clearly says this is meant to work with 8.1: http://kb.parallels.com/en/116716

Yet, the menu item is greyed out and customer support continues to not care. First I get a reply claiming it is win8-only (see above), then a few weeks later they claim I misunderstood, but that they cannot guarantee 3rdparty beta software will work (this despite the fact that the problem is in PD9 itself and that win-8.1 final was already released by then). Then I find this KB article that says it is supported. The software feels like a beta (this is not the only weird problem I had) and support is a joke :(
 
Does not solve problem

Tried the suggested solution by Juczi of the Parallels team. Does not resolve the problem.
 
So, after a month of trying various things, talking to at least two Parallels support folks (in addition to Juczi), having the trial period extended so that I have a change to verify if this feature works before buying, I finally gave up and bought PD9 anyway. I figured I could always return it in 30 days if they don't get their act together.

Guess what: that fixed it. The feature is apparently not available in trial mode.

NONE of the Parallels folk, including Juczi, were aware of this. I always mentioned trial (same thing is said at the top of this thread) and I wasted hours trying various things, because support had me go through all sorts of stupid shotgun debugging like reinstalling and what not, instead of simply saying that it is disabled in the trial. At some point, they even lied that it doesn't work with 8.1 to get rid of me. Such level of incompetence is just appalling.
 
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