Is there any workaround or way to uninstall the Parallels Tools without booting a VM using Parallels?
I am testing my Bootcamp partition with VMware - to be honest, I got fed up with the blue screens under Parallels. I'd really like to avoid re-installing a fresh Windows installation, so that's why I was asking how to uninstall the tools. It seems odd that you can only do that from within a Parallels VM - especially if you are not using Parallels at the moment. I do not want to risk booting the system again with Parallels for fear of having to reactivate (I got the activation working perfectly with Vista & VMware - I can boot in the VM and natively and both are activated - that was the other issue I had with Parallels - not being able to boot back and forth with Vista without having to reactivate). So I'd really appreciate some workaround on how to uninstall the tools AND the application from the OS X side - many file associations on OS X refer to Parallels (I should have put this request in my note as well - I've searched the forums and see that basically there is no supported uninstall of Parallels from OS X- that also to me sends a bad message on the product...) Thanks, Dave Solomon
Dave, you can uninstall Parallels Desktop from Boot Camp. To do so please open 'Add/Remove programs' control panel in Windows and remove Parallels Tools if present. If you want to uninstall Parallels desktop please do the following: 1. Open your Boot Camp virtual machine. 2. Open Configuration Editor 3. In the Resource list, click Hard Disk. 4. In the hard disk settings pane, click the 'Advanced' tab. 5. In the Cleanup Boot Camp Partition area, click the Clear button. 6. Then choose VM menu > Delete VM from Parallels Desktop menu bar and follow the on-screen instructions. It is recommended to leave the default values intact. (Please note that this operation is irreversible. The Virtual Machine will be deleted, and there will be no way to restore it.) 7. Uninstall Parallels using the Uninstall Parallels Desktop application from the original package you used to install the Parallels Desktop. But if you will provide me with blue screens you got in Parallels we will try to solve your problem and there will be no need to uninstall Parallels Desktop. Best regards, Stacey
I don't mean to be contradictory, but I've tried this several times with no luck. I've installed Leopard on a new disk, and have just run the Boot Camp Assistant to create the Boot Camp partition. I copied my old Boot Camp installation in, and arranged things to boot properly (in Boot Camp). However, when I boot into XP via Boot Camp, open Add/Remove programs, and ask it to remove Parallels Tools, it tells me that it's only possible from within a VM. Obviously, I could install Parallels under leopard, boot the Boot Camp partition as a VM and then do the removal from there, however, I'm trying to avoid installing Parallels on my Leopard install if at all possible. Any workarounds? BTW: The reason I'm trying to avoid installing Parallels is because I use VMware on lots of platforms and am switching to Fusion so I can work with existing VMware VM images on my mac. Nothing against Parallels ... I've been using it for over a year! It's just not a good solution for me if I want to cleanly move VMs between my Mac and my Linux platforms.
I also tried what was suggesting - you cannot remove the Parallels Tools when you boot natively under Boot camp. So I'm still (please) looking for a way to uninstall the Parallels Tools without having to boot the bootcamp partition under Parallels. Seems you should be able to do that!
Hello, please try to do the following: 1. Go to "My Computer" - "C" Drive - "Program Files" - "Parallels" folder and delete the "Parallels Tools" folder. 2. Click the Windows "Start" menu -> "Run" and type "regedit". Hit OK. 3. In Registry Editor, go to "My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Parallels" and delete the "Parallels Tools " entry. 4. Reboot Windows. Best regards, Stacey
Did you click the Clear button as I said before? It should remove all file associations. Best regards, Stacey
